Anne Willan

Tarte au Sucre

Sugar Yeast Cake

Preparation info
  • Serves

    6–8

    • Difficulty

      Medium

Appears in
top 1000French Regional Cooking
French Regional Cooking

By Anne Willan

Published 1981

  • About

This yeast cake with a sugar topping is popular in the North, which is sugar beet country. You can double the quantity of dough and use half for ‘pain brioché’, a rich bread that the French like to toast for breakfast.

Ingredients

t
60 g butter, softened

Method

Make the yeast dough: put the lukewarm milk in a small bowl, add the sugar and crumble in the yeast. Leave for 5-10 minutes. Sift the flour on to a marble slab or board and make a well in the centre. Add the eggs, salt and dissolved yeast mixture. Briefly mix the central ingredients; then draw in the flour with both hands, pulling the dough into large crumbs with the fingertips. Knead the dough