Brioche Cake with Caramel Custard Cream

My fifth bread baketogether (BBT) with Hanaa is a brioche-based cake filled with yummy caramel custard cream from Tish Boyle's book "The Cake Book."  I just love how versatile brioche dough is--you can turn it into hamburger buns or dinner rolls, fill it with something savory or sweet or even turn it into fried confections like beignets or donuts.  And brioche as a cake?  Well, it's simply out-of-this-world!  It's so wonderful to eat a "cake" that's not so sweet yet still has that decadent buttery goodness and tender albeit slightly chewy crumb that normal butter cakes have.  And the soaking syrup flavored with vanilla or your favorite liqueur just enhances the delicious qualities of the brioche even more placing this cake a notch above being just a casual coffee cake (though I ate this for breakfast yesterday) LOL.  The caramel custard cream is really just a lightened pastry cream with the added step of caramelizing sugar beforehand which lends a wonderful flavor to the cream but I think blending dulce de leche into the cream would be a good alternative as well.

Though I'm pretty satisfied with the way the cake turned out I do plan to make a few changes the next time I make this like slicing the cake into 3 layers instead of 2 and and adding half a recipe of (or double  :-P) the pastry cream so there's more access to the yummy cream in each slice.  Also, I think this would be really delicious when the cream is mixed with orange zest and Grand Marnier and double the almonds as well.  It also wouldn't hurt to add more soaking syrup as the cake itself is not too sweet and could use a little more moisture especially if it would be staying in the fridge for a day or so.

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