brioche, part 3

When I mixed up brioche dough, I made half the recipe. So far, I have made apricot-filled rolls, a peach and almond tart, and the goodies I am posting about here. And I still have more dough!

The best description I came up with for these was peach puffs! You could also use puff pastry, I think, and it would turn out delicious. All I did was roll out the brioche dough and cut it into 12 pieces. In retrospect, I would use a round biscuit cutter, but I cut squares. Lesson learned. Each piece was rolled thin then placed in greased muffin tins and topped with fruit filling!

Let me mention now that I am not good at cutting even pieces of dough. For example:

About 15 minutes at 350F gave a nicely browned dough and set filling.

Did I mention the layer of ground almonds, sugar, vanilla, egg, and half-and-half? Sort of a super ghetto frangipane. I think it needed more half-and-half to be more custardy, but it was still good. A definite step up from the first incarnation. See it peeking out from under the peaches?

They were easy to transport, too, so I took them to rehearsal to share. They went over well.

The peaches I bought were white peaches, which I didn’t realize when I bought them. They were still very good, just not as orange as standard peaches. All in all, I think the project turned out quite pretty, and they tasted good, too.

I’m not very confident with my measurements here because I eyeballed the whole operation after the bread dough, but the basic idea is this:

Peach Puffs

Ingredients:
a grapefruit-sized hunk of brioche dough
flour for rolling out dough

Filling
2 medium peaches
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp nutmeg

Almond layer
1/3 cup almonds, blanched and peeled
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup half-and-half
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Assembly:

Almond filling: Pulse almonds in a food processor until finely ground. Add sugar and pulse. Add extracts and egg and combine. Add half-and-half gradually until desired consistency is reached. It should be easily pourable.

Fruit filling: Blanch peaches in boiling water for about a minute, then shock in cold water and slip off skin. Dice peaches and toss with sugar, flour, and spices.

Grease the 12 cups of a muffin pan. Roll dough into a rectangle of equal thickness and cut into 12 pieces as evenly as possible. Using plenty of flour, roll each piece fairly thin, no more than 1/4″ thick as the dough puffs in the oven, and about 5-6 inches across, use a bench scraper to peel it of the counter, and drape one piece over each muffin cup. Arrange each piece of dough so that it isn’t touching its neighbors, then divide the fillings evenly among the 12 muffin tins, almond on the bottom. Let rest for about 45-60 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350F. When the dough is ready, sprinkle each cup with a little coarse sugar for added optional crunch. Bake at 350F for about 15 minutes until the edges are golden brown. Remove from oven and let cool in the pan for a few minutes, then remove and let cool on a wire rack. Serve warm or room temperature.