cardamom scented brioche with passion fruit caramel and espresso custard

prob gonna take you longer to say the name of this one out loud than it would for you to make it

hi hi helllllooo,

Welcome back to bake chats, baddie <3333

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So, I make cakes that taste like perfume, right? We know that. And we know that when I say that I mean that the flavors of the cakes are inspired by the edible scent notes of perfumes (all u freaks asking for Inexcusable Evil by Toskovat leave me ALONE!!!) The real point of this endeavor is to show ya that inspiration can literally come from anywhere. I get asked ALL the time, “omg how do you come up with some of the flavors you put together?!” Mind you, at this point it is almost like a touch of second nature, I have a lot of experience playing around with flavors and ingredients, so most of the time it just flows. It’s this snowball effect of oh this pairs well with this and that pairs well with that so ingredient a + ingredient c? Those will hopefully work together. Really a friend of a friend is my friend type shiiit ya know.

oh gosh, I forgot where I was going with that! But, I do know the point I’m really trying to make here. It’s not that I want you to want to make cakes that taste like perfume, it’s that this principle of using perfumes for creative inspiration can extend and apply to more than just cake. It’s like kinda the recipe riffin thing, and kinda the I want you to make and eat whatever you want to make and eat how you like it thing.

So today, we have something inspired by perfume that isn’t a cake!! It’s a lot more loose and free flowing, because normally, I’m trying to cram every perfume note into a cake. Today, I’m focusing on the ones that just really spoke to me :-)

I was scrolling IG and saw the Loewe announced a new fragrance, Wild Coffee. And when I popped on over to fragrantica to take a closer look at the notes, I needed it BAD. Notes include: Cinnamon, Guatemalan Cardamom, Saffron, Mango, Guava, Bitter Orange and Bergamot; Akigalawood, Amber, Indonesian Patchouli Leaf, Benzoin, Caramel and Passionfruit; Coffee, Agarwood, Tonka Bean and Madagascar Vanilla. Then I popped over to maybe try and procure a bottle. Girl, it’s a $485 bottle. Hey so, yeah my bank account ain’t set up like that. But, maybe just seeing the notes was enough. At first I was thinking okay let’s make it a cake. The more I mulled it over, while there are a lot of fun interesting notes that could work together, trying to fit all of them into a cake could prove to truly be too much. I’ve essentially run out of places to stuff and stack these flavors.

We can still have a little fun with it though. The notes that popped out to me first we’re cardamom, passionfruit, coffee. The wheels of my mind start churning and I’m thinking cardamom scented brioche + passion fruit curd + coffee custard = amazing little cream bun moment. From there I went to flipping through all my recipes to find the bases for each component. Right, because most every recipe we need to have fun already exists, ya just gotta flavor ‘em. While I did have an idea of what I wanted, you still have to be fluid with it, and let the idea guide you and not the other way around. So cardamom brioche, easy my classic brioche recipe but I’m gonna scent it with a little caradmom, cute. Coffee custard, ez pz, that’s just gonna be my pastry cream recipe, but infusing the milk with lightly crushed coffee beans. But, tonka is also a note at play here and we know I’m a bitch who loves her some tonka, so a few grates of that go into the pastry cream and just like that, we’re hitting another one of the perfume notes<333 LOVE. Then in looking for my passion fruit curd recipe, I stumbled upon a passion fruit caramel recipe and remember the perfume has a caramel note, so I pivot from curd to caramel which is gonna give a little fruity and a little bitter. Once again finding a way to layer in another note from the perfume.

In eating the final bun, you’re faint hit of cardamom as your teeth sink into the brioche, strong upfront coffee flavor, followed by a bit of that bitter fruity caramel. The flavors linger back into the cardamom and in the end you’re just left with the flavor buttery ass brioche on your tongue.

Is there a world where I would have put all these flavors together on my own? Maybe, two or three of them. Because coffee + cardamom is pretty popular and something I’ve paired together in the past, adding caramel or tonka to that seems like something I would do. But, the perfume notes are what really drives the want to explore throwing passion fruit into the mix. I dunno, just move through this world with an open eye and mind, see what catches your attention.