SWEET BRIOCHE SWIRLS

I am definately not a breakfast person, and I rarely cook breakfast items. Except on certain occasions like when my brother is over for instance, and then I love getting into weekend breakfast kitchen action mode, which happened to be the case yesterday.

Along with a table spread of scrambled eggs (with parsley, feta and olives- my fave accessory ingredients to scrambled eggs), cheeses, breads, and fruit juices, there definately had to be a sweet item too. Of course, when one is living in France, it is so easy to just pass by a boulangerie and pick up some delightful croissants or pains au chocolat, but as you foodies can understand, nothing compares to homemade.

Homemade it was, and so my efforts went into sweet brioche swirls. This is the only name I can come up with because it is somewhat of a crossover between a cinnamon roll (for the swirl and cinnamon of course) and a brioche (for the texture and dough recipe). And for variety's sake, I also made some dulce de leche swirls which, let me tell you, turned out to be amazing. I mean, seriously, how can anything with dulce de leche not be amazing?!

Above: with cinnamon, below: with dulce de leche.

I think it was clear, the dulce de leche swirls were by far a favourite. Whatever the filling was though, the fluffy brioche texture was a pure delight and a lighter (yet satisfying) way to start off the day.

Recipe for Sweet Brioche Swirls (requires dough to rest overnight):

350gr flour
75gr sugar
125gr softened butter
4 eggs
2 teaspoons yeast diluted in warm water (or follow instructions on packaging)
Pinch of salt
Filling: cinnamon/sugar/butter combinations, dulce de leche... the choices are endless.

Place the flour in a bowl. In another bowl, whisk the eggs and sugar together and transfer to bowl containing the flour. Add the butter, salt and yeast and mix all ingredients well for 5 minutes (manually or in a mixer) until dough is smooth. Cover and leave dough overnight. The next day, on a floured board, roll out dough to 1cm thickness and spread with desired filling, leaving 1cm empty on borders. Roll dough upwards starting with the side closest to you. Cut into individual pieces, place on cooking tray and leave to rest for 1 hour. Bake at 180C for 30 minutes.