My first cooking challenge: Pithiviers!!

Whole Kitchen en su Propuesta Dulce para el mes de enero nos invita a preparar un clásico de la cocina francesa: Pithiviers. 

Ok, now said that, I must write what it's all about. I don't think I have tons of free time, but I do spend/waste time looking at blogs- mainly cupcake recipes at the moment. Some of the Spanish blogs I visited had a thing about a sort of cooking challenge from a website called wholekitchen.info. Some weeks ago I decided to join their "circle", which is the name they give to their followers who register in their forum,and do the suggested idea for the month: Pithiviers. It's French  (perfect as I increased my French lesson ours this term), it is like the galette de rois -missed again the Spanish Three Wise Men day- and the filling, called Frangipane, reminds me of the filling of the almond croissants we buy in Chez Julien and The French Tarte- yes, it's almond time!!. And inspired by that, the twist in this case comes with adding some chocolate chips in the Frangipane mix. I say inspired, because both places are loved at home for their pan au chocolat aux amandes. 

As February is approaching, I made some hearts with a small heart cookie cutter on the pastry. The idea was to put some red colouring food in the Frangipane, so it would look all valentiny, but ended up being orange, so I wouldn't do that again. I also used the cookie cutter to do the shapes for the border of the Pithivier.

INGREDIENTS:

500grs of puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

icing sugar to decorate

For the filling --> FRANGIPANE

100grs sugar

100grs ground almonds

100grs soft butter

A bit of fruit licquor (I used smirnoff with cranberry alcopop)
2 eggs

HOW TO:

Cut two circles of approx. 24cm in the puff pastry. Put one of it at the bottom of the oven tray, and make the decorations on the other half that will be the top of the pithivier. 

For the FRANGIPANE, cream butter and sugar. Add one egg at a time and then the ground almonds, the licquer and the chocolate chips. Mix it well.

Once the Frangipane is done, spread it on top of the circle that you have previously put on the baking tray, leaving 2cm. at its border. Put the the other half of the pastry on top of it carefully, and give it an egg wash. Press the edges so it seals well, and make any sort of decorations you want there, so you make sure it looks pretty. Leave in the fridge for 10 minutes. After that, put it in a pre-heated oven at 200 degrees for 10 minutes. Then lower the temperature to 180. and let it bake for another 10 minutes.Et voila mes amis, nous avons un gateaux delicieux!!