Brioche with almond cream

Brioche is a yeast dough based pastry that you can get in every bakery in France. It often is layered with a mixture of nuts, almonds, custard or chocolate. Most often, however, it is available plain, without any additives.

During my last visit to France, I ate three different types of brioche. The first one I bought was with crème pâtissière and chocolate. The second one that I picked was with almonds, and the third one was a standard type without any additives. I don’t know which one I liked best. As for me, they were all fantastic, but my husband liked the almond filled one the most. After returning home, I baked this brioche for him. Certainly, I will make this delicious French pastry many more times in the future.

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Ingredients for Brioche.

Brioche dough:

• 150 ml milk
• 340 g all-purpose flour
• 150 g unsalted butter (75 g cold/ 75 g melted)
• 1/4 teaspoon of salt
• 3 tablespoons of caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• 15 g fresh yeast

Marcepan cream:

• 150 g almonds
• 50 g caster sugar
• 2 eggs
• 100 g unsalted butter
• 100 g marcepan
• 2 tablespoons of all-purpose flour

Icing:

• 150 g caster sugar
• 2-3 tablespoons of lemon juice

Additionally:

• almond flakes

How to make brioche.

Brioche dough: place 3 eggs, caster sugar and salt in a bowl. Beat it for 3-4 minutes until its consistency becomes fluffy and smooth.

Warm up the milk, add the yeast to it and mix. Pour the milk and yeast, beaten eggs and sifted flour to a big bowl. Stir for about 5 minutes, then add the lukewarm, melted butter, then knead the dough for 5 minutes. Once done, wrap the dough in cling film and place it in the fridge for 1.5 hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge and roll it out to a rectangle of 26 by 30 centimetres. Put the grated, cold butter on the rolled out dough. Fold the sides of the dough inwards so that they cover the butter completely. Roll out the folded dough into a rectangle measuring 26 by 30 centimetres, then fold the sides and roll it out again. Repeat this action 5 times in total. After the last rolling out, cover the dough with cling film and transfer it to the fridge for 2 hours. While the dough is resting in the fridge, you can make the almond cream.

Marzipan mixture: put almonds in a bowl and pour boiling water over them. Set aside for 5 minutes, then pour the water out, remove the skin, blend and peel the almonds. Combine the soft butter, marzipan, ground almonds, caster sugar, eggs and flour in a bowl. Mix until you get a creamy, homogeneous mixture.

Take the dough out from the fridge, roll it out into a rectangle measuring 30 by 35 centimetres. Put the marzipan cream on it and roll it up. Cut the roll into 8 pieces. Line a round-shaped baking tin with baking paper then place the sliced dough pieces at intervals of about 2 cm with the marzipan cream facing up and down. Brush the top of the dough with a lightly beaten egg, after that leave it for 50 minutes to rise. Place the brioche in an oven preheated to 180 degrees Celsius for about 50 minutes.

Icing: pour the caster sugar into a bowl. Add 2 tablespoons of lemon juice to start with. Rub intensively for 10 minutes. If the icing is too thick, you will definitely need to add a little more lemon juice. Therefore, don’t add the juice all at once, but do it gradually.

Remove the brioche from the oven and let it cool down. Once cold, you can sprinkle it with caster sugar or drizzle it with frosting. I also added some almond flakes on top of the icing.

Good to know when making brioche.

All the ingredients used, except of the butter, should be at room temperature. I decided to peel off the almond skin because I wanted my almond cream to be delicate. You can leave the almonds skin on.

The baking tin that I used had a diameter of 28 centimetres. You can definitely use a larger baking tin, but then cut the dough into more than 8 pieces.

Do you like sweets with almonds? If so, try our recipe for Mazurka cake with milk cream.