Gâteau Basque #1

This was a terrible recipe, but a tasty result. The technique was fussy and involved a piping bag to place the pastry bottom and top -- that's actually what attracted me. In the middle is an orange aromatic pastry cream, it's really quite luxurious. It's funny to me there is an entire festival about this dish, so it seemed important to try it.

I'm re-writing the recipe to use metric consistently, and order the ingredients the way you need to use them. For my 8-inch tart pan, I needed a little more Cake mix to cover, but it baked up adequately. There appear to be two variations, one with pastry cream, the other with Black Cherries, but here I used the cream and sour cherries which worked nicely. But really, next time, I'll use a more traditional and proper-bakers' recipe: the pastry is rolled normally and the cream is piped in, not the other way around!

Pastry Cream
300 ml     Milk, whole
  1        Orange, Zest
  1 whole  Egg
  1        Egg Yolk
240 g      Flour, all purpose
 15 g      Corn Starch
 60 g      Sugar
  5 ml     Vanilla extract

  ? ??     Sour Cherries

Cake
240 g      Flour, all purpose
  1 tsp    Baking Powder
160 g      Butter
160 g      Sugar
  2 whole  Eggs

Glaze
 1         Egg Yolk
 60 ml     Milk

Simmer Milk and Orange Zest to flavor the Milk.
In separate bowl, mix Egg, Egg Yolk, Flour, Corn Starch, Sugar and Vanilla to form a paste.
Add hot Milk mixture to mixing bowl, quickly stir to combine but not cook the eggs.
Return to saucepan, whisk over medium heat until it thickens to a pastry cream or custard texture, with out curdling the eggs.
Strain through fine sieve, cover, and chill in fridge.

Butter and dust with flour an 18 cm / 7 inch cake tin; I used an 8-inch tart pan which was just a bit too large diameter, but it worked.
Mix Flour and Baking Powder in a bowl.
In a large bowl or stand mixer, beat Butter with Sugar until smooth and creamy.
Beat in Eggs, one at a time.
Gradually add the Flour and Baking Powder and continue mixing; this is too dense for a cheap hand mixer.
Transfer into a piping bag, and pipe a spiral onto the bottom off the pie tin.
Pipe a line up the side to create an edge.

Fill the center with the cooled Pastry Cream and smooth.

Add the Sour Cherries.
Pipe the top using the same spiral technique; I didn't have quite enough to cover.
Chill while you preheat the oven to 180C / 350F.
Whisk the Egg Yolk and Milk and paint the Glaze on the top of the pie;
use the tines of a fork to carve a slight diagonal stripe pattern in the top.
Bake 45 minutes until dark golden; it will rise quite a bit.
Cool.