I’ve been threatening to make brioche for some time. Last time I made it was about seventeen years ago.

Not that I don’t like brioche–I love it–but I reckon that’s about how frequently one should eat it if one wants to live to a ripe old age. Three eggs provide most of the liquid, and 175 grams of butter give it that unbelievable silky texture. The butter and egg also make the dough incredibly sticky and difficult to work with, so it’s not something to make every weekend.

A cool, drizzly evening and the promise of a rainy day today made Sunday morning decadence sound like a good idea. I made up the dough after dinner Saturday and left it in the fridge overnight. This morning, it was a simple thing to roll balls of dough around chunks of intense dark chocolate and spoonfuls of sparkling red currant jam and pop them into little tart tins.

Half an hour later, these gorgeous little buns emerged from the oven. They were every bit as good as I remember them being seventeen years ago.

It may be another decade or two before I make brioche again, but something that decadent doesn’t need to come around too often. The memory is just as tasty as the real thing.