Speculaas Brioche Balls
Recently i’m a huge fan of soft fluffy brioche bread. For this recipe I split the dough into small rond breads. This way you can easily freeze them and later on thaw just what you want to eat. Or take them to a friend’s dinner as a dessert.
I made the brioche balls with crushed speculaas — a Belgian spiced biscuit, but if you’re more fan of chocolate or dried fruit, you can chop them up and use that instead.
First layer of the spring form
Crunchy top layer of the spring form
Ingredients :
510 g All-Purpose Flour
1 teaspoon of salt
11 g dried yeast (1 package)
200 ml milk
2 eggs
80 g melted butter
80 g sugar
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract
80 g crushed speculaas
pinch of grounded cloves
pinch of cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
Extra materials: Food processor (e.g Kenwood) with dough hook, scale, brush, bowl, plastic foil
Directions:
Warm the milk in the microwave or in a small pan to +/- 30°C . Make sure the milk is not too hot (check with you finger) otherwise the yeast with be inactivated. Poor it in a small bowl.
Add the dried yeast and one teaspoon of sugar to the warm milk. Let it stand for 10 min until it starts to bubble; this means the yeast it activated.
In your kenwood bowl add the flour, the vanilla-extract and the rest of the sugar.
Start the food processor at low speed and slowly add the yeast-milk mixture.
While the food processor keeps running at low speed, whisk the eggs and salt with the rest of the melted butter in a separate bowl.
Stir in this egg-butter mixture to your dough in the kenwood. Knead for about 10 minutes. This allows the dough to develop a strong gluten network.
Take a big bowl and put a bit of sunflower oil on the bottom. Put your dough on top and again rub this with sunflower oil to prevent drying out.
Cover the bowl with plastic foil, and let the dough rise for 2 hours in a warm place (e.g near a warm stove or in a warm oven at 30°C). The dough needs to double in size.
Meanwhile mix the crushed speculaas with the salt, a pinch of cinnamon and grounded cloves.
When the dough has doubled in size, divide into 12 balls. Using your hands, make each ball a bit flat and place a teaspoon crushed speculaas in the middle on top. Make a nice ball of it and repeat for the rest of the dough.
Place the balls (with +/- 2 cm in beween) on a baking scale covered with parchment paper. Cover with a towel and put them back in the oven (or a warm place) for 30 min.
Brush each ball with egg wash and sprinkle some crushed speculaas mixture on top.
Bake in a 180°C preheated oven for 12-15 minutes.
Enjoy these heavenly speculaas brioche balls warm with a bit of butter or jam with a dop of Greek yoghurt.
Store them in an air-tight container at room temperature — they will last for 2 to 3 days — or in your freezer if you would like to keep them for a later occasion. When they are dry just sprinkle with a bit water and put them in the microwave (30 sec) or oven (5 minutes).
Nina Beckers
