Gâteau Basque

Gateau Basque is a traditional dessert of the Northern Basque Country, made as a cake with a crumbly, tender crust despite its French name suggesting a pie. Its history centers on the town of Cambo-les-Bains in Labourd, where it may have descended from an eighteenth-century bread called bistochak that local fishermen carried to sea. The pastry cook Marianne Hirigoyen commercialized the dessert in the early nineteenth century, and later versions added rum brought back from the West Indies. The dough is a sablee pastry of butter, sugar and wheat flour, rolled out like a double crust pie and filled with either black cherry jam, some insisting on native black Xapata cherries, or almond or vanilla pastry cream. Makers traditionally mark the top with a Basque cross for cherry versions or a crosshatch pattern for cream-filled ones.