Bombolone alla Cherry Blossom Crema
Cherry blossom season is long over, so this recipe (not to mention this blog post!) is long, long overdue. Truth is, the cherry blossom hydrosol and its tisane infusion by-product had been sitting in my fridge for about a month now, patiently waiting for me to come up for air from all my freelance projects and culinary pop-ups. Turns out, yesterday was the perfect time to use my cherry blossom water for something super special.
A good friend of my husband’s kindly gifted me some blossoms from a very rare cherry blossom varietal—ito-kukuri—from some of his still-small cherry blossom plants that he has been working on propagating. (Thanks, Josh!) He saw my Instagram Stories on wanting to forage some cherry blossom branches off of my neighbour’s balcony, but because I am too shy to ask my neighbour, I would just longingly look at them every time I exit and enter my building. Josh lives two minutes away from us, so he ran some of the blossoms over (about a cup’s worth), and at first I was just going to relegate them to some bud vases for our dinner table… but then I took a whiff of their intoxicating scent and I thought it would be such a shame to watch them wilt and not extract their scent somehow. Y’all… this ito-kukuri varietal… it’s HELLA FRAGRANT… that much more aromatic than the cherry blossoms you typically see in these parts of Vancouver. It’s no wonder they are rare and highly prized (rare in BC, anyway; in Japan, they may be more common, but I cannot say so for certain). I would love for Josh to successfully propagate some of this particular varietal so we can plant them somewhere. We’ll see! Josh, you reading this? I am going to visualize success for you, k?
Nothing beats a fresh bombolone.
Bet ‘ya can’t eat just one!
On to the cherry blossom hydrosol: what the hell is it and how did I make it? Well, I referenced Alexis Nikole’s method for homemade floral hydrosol here, only instead of the wild roses she used, I used cherry blossoms. Go watch it; I implore you. This is essentially how floral hydrosols are made (like rosewater and orange blossom water)… but obviously big productions use, like, copper distills and stuff like that. Same concept though! I did, however, heat the cherry blossoms over gentle heat (not a rolling boil), because I knew I wanted to use the cherry blossom “tisane” to make a syrup. Patience is key here; I had this going in the stove for about an hour over a gentle heat, then I let the whole lot cool, untouched, so that the remaining condensation collects onto my bowl. Not a drop will be wasted, since I had so very few blossoms to work with.
The cup of blossoms I received from Josh yielded about three tablespoons' worth of hydrosol, so it’s not very much; it’s perfect for one pastry project. And its flavour is unlike its scent; cherry blossoms, when rendered this way, taste like raw almonds, but more gentle, more subtle. It’s sublime, really. Trust me on this. My favourite local bakery, Livia Sweets, makes a cherry blossom danish every spring using blossoms they have foraged themselves, but they use a different method with which to infuse their cherry blossom pastry cream. You can see their method here; it is FASCINATING. It is utilized by many Japanese households when they prepare seasonal cherry blossom treats!
Okay, so, bombolone time!
This recipe for bombolone is partially derived from Letitia Clark's La Vita È Dolce cookbook, but I switched up a lot of the ingredient weights and methods just based off of my own personal preferences whenever I make an enriched dough like a doughnut dough! I highly recommend her cookbook, by the way; it has been such an invaluable resource for me whenever I recipe-develop or test Italian-inspired desserts.
Without further ado…
Bombolone alla Cherry Blossom Crema
(This recipe makes 12 portions, with about a cup of leftover cherry blossom pastry cream that you can use to top your pancakes or whatever! I also use a combo of volumetric and weighed measurements here, so get your scales out!)
For the Bombolone Dough
10 g. active dry yeast
1/3 cup whole milk
1/4 cup cherry blossom tisane
255 g. AP flour
255 g. 00 flour
10 g. kosher salt*
60 g. organic cane sugar
3 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
90 g. unsalted butter, softened
2 litres + 1 tbsp. neutral oil (grapeseed or sunflower)
Cardamom Sugar
1/2 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 tsp. cardamom seeds, crushed**
For the Cherry Blossom Pastry Cream
2 cups whole milk
1 cup cherry blossom tisane
3 tbsp. cherry blossom hydrosol
1 lemon, peel only
1/2 tsp. kosher salt
5 large egg yolks
1/2 cup organic cane sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
Special Kitchen Equipment
kitchen scale
stand mixer with dough hook attachment
frying thermometer
sheet trays with accompanying cooling racks
Prepare the bombolone dough, phase one:
1) Heat the milk in your microwave or on your stovetop over gentle heat until just lukewarm. If you accidentally heat it up too much, you can always cool it down by pouring the quarter cup of cold cherry blossom tisane from the fridge, which I have totally done.
2) Bloom the yeast in this lukewarm milk and tisane mixture and give it a stir. Leave for 5 to 10 minutes.
3) Get your stand mixer with the dough attachment out. Weigh out both your flours, your sugar, and salt. Mix the dry ingredients thoroughly.
4) After your yeast has bloomed in the milk and tisane mixture, crack your three whole eggs and two yolks into it.
5) With the mixer on medium, carefully pour in the bloomed yeast and the eggs. Continue to mix until the dough comes together and the dough seems to be picking up the sticky dough parts off of the sides of the bowl. This takes some time depending on your mixer; about ten minutes. Check on it closely.
6) As soon as the dough starts coming together, add the softened butter. Continue to mix until the dough becomes smooth, elastic, and shiny. The butter should be well incorporated into the dough.
7) Smear the inside of a bowl with 1 tbsp. of a neutral oil of your choice. Carefully gather the dough from the mixer bowl and form it into a smooth ball. Place the dough ball inside of the oiled bowl and let it proof for two hours in ambient temperature, covered with a tea towel. I usually place it inside my oven with the oven light on. If you have a proofing setting in your oven, well, la-di-da! Aren’t you fancy?! Anyway, use that proofing setting, fancy pants!
Prepare the cherry blossom pastry cream:
1) Heat your milk, lemon zest strips, salt, and your cherry blossom tisane in a heavy-bottomed saucepan over gentle heat until nice and warm. Be careful not let it come to the boil!
2) While your milk is gently heating, whip your egg yolks and sugar into a frenzy until pale golden and mousse-like—nice and airy. Carefully add in the cornstarch and mix to incorporate.
3) Temper, temper time! Steady your yolk, sugar, and cornstarch mixture on your counter and continue to whip the mixture whilst pouring in about a cup or two of your warm, lemon and cherry-blossom-infused milk. Do not stop agitating the mixture; mix until well-incorporated.
4) Fish the lemon peels out of the milk and pour in the tempered egg, cornstarch, and sugar mixture into the saucepan. Turn on your stove to medium-low and stir, stir, stir until the mixture thickens to an aioli consistency. Again, you do not want to bring this crema to a boil. Never stop stirring.
5) Once thickened, and to ensure a truly smooth crema, I like to pass the pastry cream through a sieve! Or you can take your immersion blender and blend the lot until super smooth.
6) Stir in the cherry blossom hydrosol into your crema.
7) Cool the crema in your fridge with a layer of crumpled parchment paper right over top of its surface, to prevent a skin from forming.
Bombolone dough, phase two:
1) Prepare a sheet tray with parchment paper that has been lightly floured. Set aside.
2) After two hours, or when your dough has doubled in size, weigh the dough and divide equally into 12 portions (or 18 portions, for little mini bombolone; obviously I opted for 12 here). Roll each portion into a smooth ball and lay each of the dough portions onto the floured parchment tray.
3) Cover the tray with a tea towel and return to the cool, oven-lit oven to proof for two more hours, or until each ball has doubled in size.
Make the cardamom sugar, then fry the bombolone:
1) In a wide-rimmed mixing bowl, crush some cardamom seeds and mix this in with the half cup of sugar.
2) Prepare your fry station: lay out a sheet tray with a cooling rack over it, for draining.
3) In a large heavy-bottomed saucier or pot, heat up 2 L of neutral oil to 350°F. Gently drop around 2 or 3 bombolone dough balls into the frying oil, and fry each side for two minutes, or until golden brown. Monitor the oil with a thermometer to make sure the oil stays roughly around 350°F.
4) Drain the bombolone over the cooling rack briefly, and then drop the still warm doughnuts inside the bowl with the cardamom sugar and toss to coat.
5) Repeat until all have been fried and coated with cardamom sugar!
Assemble the bombolone:
1) Outfit a reusable pastry bag with a star pastry tip (823 or 824 should do) and place some pastry cream inside.
2) Using a paring knife, make a small notch on one side of the bombolone and pierce through the doughnut, but DO NOT pierce all the way through to the opposite end of the pastry.
3) Fill each bombolone with the pastry cream.
Eat and enjoy! The bombolone are best eaten the day of, but it is also delicious the day after. Store, covered, in your fridge if you don’t happen to finish the whole lot in one day. It should keep for two days after it’s been made!
I mean, obviously, these bombolone take some time to make and are a labour of love, but goddamn are they ever fun to make, and you really do feel like a boss when you present homemade fucking doughnuts to your loved ones. TRUST ME.
Ingredient Notes:
* For the love of god, DO NOT use table salt. Just do away with the table salt entirely.
** Also, for the love of god, DO AWAY with pre-ground cardamom. Buy the pods. You can even buy the whole seeds these days, sans pods. Just don’t spend your money on pre-ground cardamom, k?
Yes, Gaga, YES!
Get in there!
xo, Issha