A Fig, Anise Seed and Pine Nut Tarte au Sucre / Butterkuchen

featuring my favourite quick dough method

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After a summer spent mainly on the sofa on extended sick leave, about 10 days ago I finally got the all clear from my doctor to slowly start resuming normal activities - to return to work, to play with my toddler the way I am used to, to exercise, to travel and, most importantly, to get back into the kitchen. While I was stuck on the sofa I made a long list of exciting dishes I couldn't wait to cook again (or cook for the first time). Partly inspired by reading Diana Henry’s excellent essay in Vogue about eating her way back to health after a long stint in hospital earlier this year. Yet the first things I made were predictably simple - I guess as a way of easing my way back into cooking and baking after such a long hiatus.

There were a couple of batches of chocolate chip cookies. And the first meal I cooked for my family was pasta con sugo di pomodoro with buffalo mozzarella melted into it at the end - simple yet delicious and always a guaranteed hit with our toddler (and his parents to be fair). But over the coming weeks I am looking forward to really get back into cooking and baking - I already have plans for a Turkish Manti inspired pasta dish featuring torn lasagna sheets and spiced mince (an idea inspired by both Diana Henry and Ozlem Warren) and Meera Sodha’s 18 Carat Laksa. There is also a big backlog of recipes I want to test for this Substack.

But enough of what I am still planning to cook and bake. Let’s talk about what I have actually been baking and the recipe I came here to share with you this week: a Fig, Anise Seed and Pine Nut Tarte au Sucre / Butterkuchen featuring my favourite German quick dough method.

For those not yet familiar with it, French Tarte au Sucre or German Butterkuchen is a buttery cake made with an enriched yeasted dough. In France, Tarte au Sucre is often round in shape whereas in Germany a Butterkuchen is more commonly a traybake. What makes both Tarte au Sucre and Butterkuchen so special is this: before baking the dough is dimpled using your fingers or the handle of a wooden spoon and you then distribute lots of small cubes of butter evenly across the dough before showering the whole thing with lots of sugar. (If you think this process sounds a little similar to making Focaccia, you aren’t wrong. In fact, I like to think of Tarte au Sucre or Butterkuchen as the answer to the question of what would happen if Focaccia crossed the Alps - in short, you get a sweet enriched dough drenched in butter and sugar instead of a savoury enriched dough drenched in olive oil and salt). Many recipes for Butterkuchen also call for some cream to be brushed on the dough to make the resulting cake extra moist. And yes, Denmark has something similar in the form of Brunsviger although there they use a buttery sugar syrup to brush on top of the cake before baking. Also, Brunsviger is typically quite tall, whereas Tarte au Sucre and Butterkuchen are fairly flat.

One of the reasons I wanted to share this recipe is that I wanted to introduce you all to the genius quick dough it uses. As I mentioned, Butterkuchen (same as Tarte au Sucre) is traditionally made with a yeasted enriched dough. However, there is a longstanding German tradition of replacing the more traditional yeasted enriched dough in numerous recipes with a so-called Quark Öl Teig - an ingenious quick dough made with quark (a type of fresh German curd cheese, you could use ricotta or faisselle or fromage blanc instead) and oil and that uses baking powder instead of yeast as leavener.

The benefit of this quick dough method is that it is, ahem, quick to assemble but also a dream to work with, the dough does not require any proofing and the resulting cakes stay fresh for longer than anything made with a yeasted dough. Quark Öl Teig is so popular in Germany it is used in many many recipes typically asking for a yeasted enriched dough - from pizza to brioche pastries etc, and of course Butterkuchen.

Butterkuchen is not only beautifully rich and delicious, it is also the perfect thing to bake right now. The time of year when you might be invited to lots of get togethers to catch up with friends after a long summer break and might want to bring something sweet along. When a slight dip in temperatures might entice you to turn the oven on again for the first time in weeks but when you are not yet embracing big and time-consuming baking projects because you still want to spend as much time outside as possible before the weather turns.

It also goes without saying that Butterkuchen lends itself to many variations. Common ones include scattering silvered almonds over the top of the dough before baking and maybe some cherries or blueberries which will bake into delicious little jammy puddles to sink your teeth into. Since we are at the tail-end of summer, I could not resist adding some sliced juicy purple figs and giving the Butterkuchen a bit of a Mediterranean flavour profile with lots of anise seed, orange zest and orange blossom water in the dough as well as anise seed and pine nuts as part of the topping.

But before we get to this week’s recipe, below is the August round-up of all the things I enjoyed reading / eating / cooking / baking and drinking. What have you been enjoying lately? Let me know in the comments below.

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August Round-Up

Reading: I already mentioned Diana Henry’s essay in Vogue further above. While stuck on the sofa I also read Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro and In Paradise by Hanya Yanihagara which I thoroughly enjoyed and which made for lighter reading than A Little Life!

Eating / Cooking / Baking: I won’t lie, there was a lot of take-out while I was on sick leave - some of it delicious like the Lebanese feast we ordered for my birthday, some just ok. That is until we had some family visit and spoil us with all sorts of homemade comfort food, including the most tender Schnitzel, courtesy of my mother in law, my mum’s life-affirming Turkish lentil soup and a glorious apple crumble made by my dad. (Apparently the difference between a just good apple crumble and a glorious apple crumble is that the latter requires almost an entire pack of butter - and who am I to argue with that?!). There were also some birthdays to celebrate - first mine, then my son’s - and we discovered that if you cannot make a homemade birthday cake, Wittamer here in Brussels does a glorious twist on a Black Forest Cake using raspberries and white chocolate.

Drinking: Before this week’s inevitable drop in temperatures and return of rainy weather my beverage of choice these past few weeks has been water kefir from Kult. It’s a delicious low sugar alternative to soda and, bonus point, is also good for your gut. Kult has lots of different flavours, current favourites include peach and jasmine and hibiscus chai. I also discovered that one of my favourite Matcha brands sells ground Hojicha. And while I don’t mind grinding my own loose leaf Hojicha into a powder using my trusted spicegrinder, you can’t beat the convenience of buying Hojicha preground. Aside from drinking it over ice or hot with some oat milk I am also looking forward to more baking experiments with Hojicha like these Hojicha madeleines I shared here on Substack a while back.

Small side note: if you don’t already follow me on Instagram, why not head over there to follow my baking and cooking experiments and culinary adventures in Brussels and elsewhere in real time?

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Fig, Anise Seed and Pine Nut Tarte au Sucre or Butterkuchen

This makes enough for a half sheet pan - enough to feed 8 greedy mouths and many more less greedy mouths. Best eaten on the day it is made, this Butterkuchen will keep for 3-4 days. If fig and anise seed is not your favourite combination, you could also go for blueberries and thyme, purple grapes and fennel, thinly sliced apples and cinnamon or thin slivers of pears and cardamom, for example.

Ingredients

350g all purpose flour
3 tsp baking powder
50g sugar
Pinch of salt
1/4 tsp anise seeds
Zest of 1/2 orange
90ml oil
80ml milk
2 tsp orange blossom water
250g quark (or other fresh curd cheese like ricotta or fromage blanc)

For the topping
50ml cream
50g cold butter, cut into small cubes
3 figs, halved and cut into thin slivers
50g sugar
1/4 tsp anise seeds
25g pine nuts

Directions

Pre-heat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius (180 degrees Celsius fan) and line a half sheet pan (ca. 20x32cm) with parchment paper.

In the bowl of a stand mixer whisk together the flour, baking powder, sugar and salt with the anise seeds and orange zest.

Add the oil, milk, orange blossom water and quark to the bowl and using the dough hook quickly knead the dough until everything is well amalgamated. Do not overwork the dough as you don’t want it to become tough and chewy by starting to develop the gluten in the flour.

On a lightly floured surface roll out the dough to roughly a 20x32cm rectangle and carefully transfer to the prepared sheet pan.

Using your fingers or the handle of a wooden spoon dimple the dough all over.

Brush the cream all over the surface of the dough. Next, scatter the butter cubes over the dough, then distribute the quartered figs evenly across the dough.

Mix the sugar together with the anise seeds and pine nuts and scatter over the dough.

Bake for ca. 25 minutes or until the Butterkuchen is well-risen and just starting to turn golden brown in colour along the edges.

Leave to come to room temperature before serving.