Baking

For years I had hoarded a recipe clipping for these buns, and at last I had a good excuse to trot it out and make some. After they were removed from the oven and had cooled a little, I slathered them with butter. The crumb was close, the texture was drier than a brioche-style bun, they were packed with fruit and the saffron gave a curiously savoury note to what otherwise would have been sweet buns.

Pithivier is more a work of design than an absolute on how and what it’s made of. There are a few absolutes, though. It must be made with puff pastry. It must be circular. And it must have the rays of the sun etched into the top of the pastry so that, when baked, it represents a golden sun motif. Other than that, you can go your own way, fill it with all manner of sweet and savoury fillings, and make small ones or large ones.

There’s nothing like an impending ‘state occasion’ such as Mother’s Day to bring out the wannabe cake-maker in me. While this recipe looks disturbingly long and convoluted, it’s actually very simple. The base recipe is a version of chocolate cake made with oil rather than butter. It produces a cake that is very moist but doesn’t have a tendency to ‘crumb’, which means it’s a delight to slice, fill and decorate.