NIgella's Breton Gato

The recipe for this cake is in Nigella Lawson's How to be a Domestic Goddess. You'll find it not under "Breton Gato" but "Gateau Breton", but "Gateau" (which is French for cake) sounds so much like "Gato" (which is Spanish for cat), that I couldn't resist tweaking the name. That's about all I tweaked though, save for adding a little vanilla extract, a little almond extract, and baking it in a different sized springform pan (she calls for a 10 in. pan, and I have a 9 in.)

This cake is delicious. Sort of across between a big shortbread cookie and a vanilla poundcake. We ate it over at my folks house with vanilla ice cream, but it would be just as good alone, or with heavy cream, or even raspberry coulis. The only other thing I'll say is this: Use Really Good Butter. You taste the butter in this cake the way you taste it in shortbread, so it's worth it to splurge and use good, fresh stuff. I put a brick of KerryGold, which is Irish-style cream butter, into this and it worked really well, but any good butter will do.

Ingredients:

- For the Cake-

- 1 1/2 cups cake flour

- 3/4 cup plus 1 tbs. sugar

- 1 cup plus 2 tbs. unsalted butter, cut into cubes

- 6 large egg yolks

-t tsp. vanilla extract

-1/4 tsp. almond extract

* 9 inch springform pan, well buttered.

-For the Glaze-

- 1 tsp. egg yolk, for the six above

-1 tbs. water

Process:

1. Preheat the oven to 375. You'll use the middle rack.

2. Mix the glaze and put it aside.

3. Put the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer. Without running the mixer, add in the butter, egg yolks, vanilla and almond extracts.

4. With the dough-hook attachment, slowly mix until the dough is smooth and golden. Don't over-mix, but it should all be pretty uniformly incorporated.

5. With well-floured hands, spread the dough into the springform pan. The dough is going to be really sticky. Once the top is smooth and even, baste the top with the egg/water glaze (not too much) and score the top in a wide lattice pattern.

6. Pop it into the oven for 15 min.

7. After 15 min., lower the temp to 350 and continue to bake for 25 minutes or so, until it's golden and firm to the touch.

8. Let the cake cool completely in the pan. Once cool, unmold it and serve! You can keep leftovers pretty well for 3-5 days if it's well-sealed, although I doubt that it'll last that long!