Brioche Raisin Snails

This week’s TWD recipe is Brioche Raisin Snails, was chosen by Peabody of Culinary Concoctions by Peabody

Since this recipe had three components – my initial plan was to make each component separately and then assemble and bake on Sunday morning. Well that didn’t happen. I would up making the dough around 11pm on Sat night and making the cream and raisins Sunday morning and baking them Sunday afternoon.

As ususal regardless of how simple a recipe is, whenever I have timeline and I don’t follow it – things go wrong, for example:

• Dough: I had some trouble with the dough. Mainly the part where the dough has to go into the refrigerator. The thermostat on my fridge was broken so anything I put in there freezes – even though it is on level “1”. Every time I took it out to slap it down – it was semi frozen. But I went thru with all the steps anyway. When it was time for the 2^nd rising – they didn’t rise much.
• Custard: Wow. I had a lot of trouble with this. I could tell that there were some “pieces and that I would have to pass it thru a sieve, but I was shocked at the amount of “scrambled eggs” that were left over when I was done. Even then my mixture was not completely silky, it was kind of grainy. Not sure why as I have made custards/puddings etc before. I think next time I will use my hand held mixer in one had to get the constant whisking while I am pouring in other liquids. To me it was kind of like patting my head while rubbing my stomach. Hard.
• Raisins: I didn’t have a problem with the raisins. I just ignited the raisins with a lit skewer to keep my hands from being scorched. It was kinda cool.

I have to admit I was skeptical when I first read the recipe. But then something happened. While I was cutting the log into 1” pieces, some of the pastry cream+cinnamon sugar+raisins oozed out of the end. So I decided to taste it. SOOOO DELICIOUS!! I could have eaten a cup of it by itself. I immediately made an extra batch of raisins and made another log and put it in the freezer to bake another time.

I baked the first batch for 25 minutes, but I felt they were too brown, so the 2^nd batch I baked for 20 minutes. Perfect. Once they came out of the oven, i couldn’t wait i had to eat one (two) right away. They were so good. So good that I didn’t realize until later that i totally forgot to put the glaze on.

I took these to my Moms house for Palm Sunday dinner and they were a hit. Everyone loved them.

I tried one this morning and they still tasted good but the dough was a little dry – probably because of the issues with my dough. I got a new fridge yesterday – so I am going to try this dough again. I will also add a little more pastry cream as it seemed like it soaked into the dough and the flavor really got lost in the background. I would also add more cinnamon sugar.

Problems aside these are a delicious treat and the recipe (all three components) are keepers!

For printable version of the recipe click here

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