Gateau Basque is one of the most famous desserts from French Basque country. And with good reason. A tender, sweet, cookie-like dough encloses a thick pastry cream flavored with vanilla and orange zest. A special cherry jam is often spread over the pastry cream before the top crust goes on. It is exquisite. I learned how to make Gateau Basque from Bernadette Irribarren, a native of the area, who has been baking the cake regularly for decades. At the time I was collecting recipes from immigrant bakers for my cookbook, “A Baker’s Odyssey.” Bernadette invited me to her home so that I could learn first-hand how she makes this special dessert.
Bernadette is an instinctive cook, and the practice ingrained in her during decades of baking–the deftness and skill with which she makes the pastry and filling–are exciting to watch and to be a part of. Bernadette makes everything by hand, and the only measure she uses is a soupspoon. Fifteen heaping soupspoons of flour and 10 to 12 soupspoons of sugar get plopped into a mixing bowl for the dough. She adds the butter and reduces it to smaller pieces with rapid pinching movements of her fingers. Then she makes a well in the dry ingredients, adds the eggs, yolks, fruit zest and flavoring, and works them in quickly and with a light touch of a hand.
“Enough” milk goes into a pot to heat up for the pastry cream (creme patissiere), and into another pot she adds 10 soupspoons of sugar and 4 of flour to beat with the egg yolks which serve to enrich, sweeten, and thicken the pastry cream. Make the pastry first and chill it for about 1 hour or until it has firmed up.
The high amount of sugar in the dough makes it a challenge to work with, but you’ll be thrilled with the results. While the pastry is in the refrigerator, make the pastry cream. It needs to be at room temperature before being enclosed in the pastry.
Here are the dry ingredients in the bowl. Bernadette has worked the butter into the flour and created a well in the center for the eggs and sugar.
After adding the eggs and sugar, Bernadette works the dough with her hands until it gathers into a smooth mass. Chilling for an hour or so firms the dough so that it can be rolled easily.
Here’s the dough in the pan. Don’t be concerned about rough, uneven edges. They are easily smoothed out after the filling goes in and the top crust goes on.
Bernadette is adding the cooled pastry cream to the crust.
When Bernadette has spread the pastry cream evenly in the shell, she adds some Basque cherry jam on top. You can use any jam you like. In Basque country the cherries grown there make excellent preserves.
Then the top crust goes on and Bernadette trims away the extra dough with a sharp knife.
She presses the top and bottom crusts together to seal in the filling and crimps the edges with a fork.
For a final decoration, Bernadette brushes the Gateau with an egg glaze and runs a fork all over the top. She gathers all the dough scraps and makes cookies with them.
And here’s the Gateau Basque all ready to bake.
Bernadette’s baked Gateau Basque. Magnificent! Bernadette says Gateau Basque is really better the day after baking, and she never refrigerates it. I do refrigerate the gateau after it has cooled to room temperature. Bring it to room temperature before serving.