Blazin' Blaisins

TWD: Dorie's Brioche Raisin Snails

I really wish that I had more time to post things other than my TWD posts each week, but for some reason I just haven't had an enormous amount of time for cooking lately. I'm going to make a real effort to post about some other stuff here over the next week or so. Not that I don't love Tuesday's with Dorie, but I definitely need a little more variety.

Anyway, on to this week's challenge...This challenge was chosen by Peabody of Culinary Concoctions by Peabody (the link is in my favorites list). She bravely chose Dorie's Brioche Raisin Snails. I must be honest and say, I saw this at first and groaned, you see I'm a raisin hater. They just do absolutely nothing for me in a dessert. This is odd but for some reason I liken biting into a raisin in a cake or cookie to biting into a large bug. Yes, I know I'm an odd person; my husband judges me frequently! Anyway, finally I saw that some people were subbing the raisins out for other dried fruits and fortunately I was able to find dried blueberries (hence the "blaisins" in the title), can I say YUM! I knew these would be perfect.

The next step was securing some help and hopefully a better location for making this complicated challenged. Luckily I know that my mom is always willing to help out when I need a hand and a bigger kitchen. She volunteered and we spent most of Sunday making the parts of this challenge. We made a fantastic brioche dough, an okay pastry cream (it tasted fabulous but was a little lumpy, I think I rushed it), and some really, really good flambeed dried blueberries. That was definitely the coolest step. We tried to take a picture but unfortunately the flames just wouldn't show up, but trust me it flamed up pretty good!

We decided to let all of the pieces chill overnight and got together on Monday to finish up the snails or Brioche Blueberry Twirls (I renamed them because I couldn't get past the "snail" idea...once again I'm a weirdo). I must say that these were actually really easy to put together. The dough rolled out with no problems, the pastry cream, raisins, cinnamon, and sugar were of course easy to apply, and the mixture actually rolled up with no problems whatsoever! I was a little worried about cutting each roll, but I just used short, fluid slices to cut through them without flattening the whole roll. After rising, they turned out perfectly!!

Finally, the taste...WOW, these are so incredibly tasty. Every aspect of these snails or twirls was fantastic. The brioche was nice and buttery, the blueberries were tangy and sweet, and the pastry cream was luscious! The icing was the perfect finishing touch. I really could not have been more pleased with how these turned out, but I must say the blueberries were the best touch. I really think that raisins would have done these "snails" a disservice. The blueberries are the way to go...trust me! These would definitely be worth trying again with blueberries if you tried something else the first time. Anyway, here's the final product and if you would like the recipe visit Peabody's blog.

I also have to give credit where it is due; my mom is a stickler for presentation in photos so she created my leafy presentation for my final picture. She actually clipped the leaves and berries from the plants in her yard. As soon as she e-mails me a picture of her beautiful yard I will be sure to post it here. She does a fabulous job with her flowers and plants; it's always beautiful! So thanks Mama!