French strawberry shortcake with rum-soaked brioche

Sprinkle around 8 g active dry yeast into 3 tablespoons of warm water, stir, and stand about five minutes to activate.

Add 2 tablespoons sugar, about a tablespoon of salt and 3 tablespoons of warm tepid milk.

Make a well in one pound of bread flour, add four eggs and the yeast mixture, cut through with a spatula to combine, then work by hand into a dough.

Lift, flip and slap the dough for two to three minutes, until it has enough body to take a forward push with the heel of the hand as it is flipped over.

Soften 2 ounces of chilled butter by beating it with a rolling pin and smearing it until malleable.

Rapidly fold and smear the butter into the dough with the heel of the hand, gathering the dough with a scraper and smearing again. It will be ropey and sticky until it absorbs the butter; work fast so the butter does not turn oily.

Work until the dough is smooth and elastic and has cleaned the butter off the surface and your hand, then form it into a ball.

Dough into a bowl. A room temperature rise takes five to six hours.

To delay it, refrigerate for a nine to ten hour rise instead.

Deflate the risen dough.

Lift the left side of the dough over to the other side, scoop that side up and push it back to the left, revolve a quarter turn clockwise and repeat eight to ten times to smooth the bottom and build surface tension.

Turn smooth side up and rotate under the palms, tucking dough under the ball; in about a dozen turns it is a neat ball with a pucker underneath.

Butter a cake tin.

Place the ball in the centre of the tin and pat the edges out all round. It should fill about two thirds of a one and a half inch tin.

Leave at room temperature about an hour until it fills the tin.

Hull one and a half pounds of strawberries with a paring knife, cutting round quickly and removing as little of the fruit as possible.

Reserve four to six of the best strawberries of even size to decorate. Halve or quarter the rest depending on size.

Toss the cut strawberries with a little sugar, to taste.

Bake the risen brioche at 400F for 20 minutes.

For the syrup measure 170 g of sugar and a scant half pint of water.

Heat the water and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar has completely dissolved, then take it off the heat.

Pour the syrup into a wider pan and leave it until lukewarm.

Once the brioche has browned and risen above the pan, turn the oven down to 350 and bake ten to fifteen minutes more.

Pass five and a half ounces of apricot jam through a sieve so none of the skin gets through.

When the syrup has come to room temperature, add six tablespoons of Kirsch.

The brioche is done when it comes easily out of the pan, is nicely browned and sounds hollow when thumped.

Cool the brioche on a rack.

Put the strained apricot preserves in a saucepan with 25 g of sugar.

Bring to a boil until the sugar dissolves and it sticks to the back of a spoon, then off the heat.

Set a bowl over a larger bowl of water and two ice cubes, with a kitchen towel between so it does not spin, and add 236 ml of heavy cream.

Beat the cream until it doubles in volume and the beaters leave traces on the surface, then add the vanilla.

Sift in three and a half ounces of icing sugar and beat again until no clumps remain. Refrigerate until needed.

With a long serrated knife slice off the top quarter of the brioche as a cover about three quarters of an inch thick.

Cut the cover into six to eight pie-shaped wedges and place them upside down on a rack over a tray.

Hollow out the remaining brioche: outline a circle three quarters of an inch in from the edge all round and hollow to within three quarters of an inch of the bottom.

Set the hollowed brioche container hollow side up on the serving dish.

Warm the syrup slightly so it is tepid. Drain the strawberries and add their juices to the syrup.

Pour successive spoonfuls of tepid syrup over the brioche until it has soaked it up, and over the upside down cover wedges.

Fold the cut strawberries into the Chantilly cream.

Reheat the apricot glaze so it is fluid and paint the outside of the brioche container with it warm.

Turn the strawberries and cream into the container, domed in the centre.

Set the brioche wedges on top of the filling, points rising to a peak at the centre.

Paint the top wedges with apricot glaze. Whipped cream piped into the gaps is optional.

Dust the top with a touch of icing sugar.

Just before serving, decorate the top with the reserved strawberries, sliced.

To serve, cut down between the edges from the top to the bottom.