Coca de San Juan with cream and cherries

San Juan coca is consumed on the night of the revetlla or festival of Sant Juan.

It is a very spongy coca that can be presented with pine nuts or candied fruits, although there are many variants that are also very good.

Today's coca is going to be covered with pastry cream and cherries.

For 4 people

Time: 12h ferment rest + 5 hours

Ingredients:

For the ferment:

170 g strong flour

110 gr of water

7 g dry yeast or 21 g fresh yeast

For the mass:

340 g strong flour

100 gr of water

2 eggs

A little orange or lemon zest

80 g cold butter

100 g of sugar

One teaspoon of salt

1 beaten egg to paint the dough

Cherries

For the pastry cream (for 1 scoop)

250 ml milk

2 egg yolks

50 g of sugar

1 c/c vanilla essence

A piece of lemon peel

20 gr of Cornstarch

Preparation:

To make the ferment, put the flour, water and yeast in a bowl, mix well and form a ball.

Put in a bowl covered with plastic wrap.

We let it ferment overnight in the refrigerator.

The next day before following the recipe, leave the dough on the counter for at least half an hour so that it loses the cold.

To make the dough we can use a food processor.

Add the water and eggs, mix well and add the ferment, flour, sugar, lemon zest, salt and mix until all the ingredients are integrated.

We will start by kneading for 5 minutes and let the dough rest for another 5 minutes.

We continue kneading for another 5 minutes and let the dough rest again for another 5 minutes.

Add the cold butter cut into cubes. We knead for 10 minutes, until we obtain a smooth and shiny dough.

Transfer the dough to a greased bowl and let it ferment for 2 hours.

While preparing the pastry cream.

Put the milk in a saucepan to heat, except for a little that we will add to the egg mixture, with the lemon peel and let it infuse for a while.

In a bowl we beat the eggs with the sugar and vanilla and add the remaining milk to finish mixing well.

We remove the saucepan from the heat and remove the lemon peel.

Pour the milk into the egg mixture, mix well and return to the saucepan, stirring constantly until it thickens.

We remove from the heat and transfer the cream to a covered bowl in contact with plastic wrap to cool. Refrigerate while not using it.

Once the dough has rested we can make one large coke (remember that the amounts of cream are for one coca) or two medium ones.

Put a little flour on the counter and take the dough out of the bowl, with the help of a rolling pin form the cake or if we make two cakes, cut in two, stretch the dough to a thickness of approximately 1 cm.

If when trying to stretch the dough we see that it contracts, we cover it and let it rest for about 10 minutes.

Place the dough on the Solid griddle with baking paper, cover it with a clean cloth and let it rest until it doubles in size (1 hour and a half more or less).

We heat the oven to 200ºC, we paint the coca with beaten egg and with a knife we ​​carefully mark diamond-shaped lines, put the pastry cream over the lines and decorate with the cherries.

Cook the coca in the oven at 190ºC between 30 and 35 minutes.

Photographs and recipe by Sivia .