Brioche Raisin Snails

The upcoming Tuesdays with Dorie recipe is Pecan Honey Sticky Buns. I read through this recipe earlier this week, and saw that it called for half of Dorie's Golden Brioche dough. Well, what am I to do with the other half of the brioche dough? I guess I could make brioche, and while I'm sure that's delicious, it doesn't sound very exciting. At the same time, I want to catch up on previous TWD posts that I missed since I'm a recent addition. Conveniently, the March 18 recipe was for Brioche Raisin Snails - perfect!

I'll probably talk a bit more about the dough itself in the upcoming sticky bun post, but suffice it to say that it was delicious even by itself. After sitting in the refrigerator overnight, I cut the dough in half (effectively giving me enough for 1 loaf), and set it out to warm up slightly before rolling it out.

The previous night, I made the rummed up raisins, as well as the vanilla pastry cream, and stored them in the fridge. The rum raisins call for dark rum in plumped up raisins. It wasn't until I got home that I realized we don't have any dark rum. Sure, we have a TON of rum, but not the dark stuff. Looking for substitutions, I could only find the non-alcoholic variety...but then I wouldn't get to play with a big flame! I finally came across a substitution list in one of my Alton Brown books: light rum can be substituted with pineapple juice flavored with almond extract; dark rum can be substituted with molasses thinned with pineapple juice and flavored with almond extract. So, I simply added some molasses to light rum, and voila! dark rum (2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons light rum, plus 1 teaspoon molasses). After making up this concoction and adding it to the heated raisins, I lit it on fire (a first for me!) and got a surprisingly blue flame. Luckily, I didn't singe any hairs, but I could definitely feel the heat. If you're doing this, make sure you use a very long lighter.

Back to the assembly, I then rolled out the dough and topped it with the vanilla pastry cream, followed by the rum raisins, and topped with cinnamon sugar. If you're making this, don't forget to leave an inch bare at the top of the roll so everything comes together.

After rolling tightly, I cut off the edges, and then sliced the roll into 1-inch portions. I ended up with 10 of these snails. It was getting pretty late, and I didn't want to wait an hour and a half for these to rise, so I put them in the oven on the warm setting, with the door cracked open, and left them there for about 20 minutes. At this time, they about doubled in size, and were very soft. I took them out of the oven, preheated to 375 degrees, and then put them back in for 20 delicious smelling minutes.

After taking them out of the oven, I set them on a cooling rack to come to room temperature. Unfortunately, I couldn't enjoy them at that moment (it was getting a tad late to be snacking), so I stored them in the refrigerator overnight. Come to think of it, I haven't even tasted one yet!

One second...

There, much better! It's very raisiny, and the brioche makes it great. Lots of flavor, even after-taste. I decided to take a bite from the runt of the litter...I'll leave the big ones for later! Maybe I'll even bring them in to work this morning, if I'm feeling generous.

I didn't bother making the glaze for this recipe. I feel that the tight rolled snails look good enough without, and they're plenty tasty without having to add more sugar to it.

Recipe: Baking: From My Home to Yours, by Dorie Greenspan, pp. 56-57.