Baked Brie with Champagne and Almonds
Warm, gooey brie topped with champagne-soaked fruit and toasted almonds — France's "wine of kings," whose history begins with Roman vineyards and a disputed monk, paired with a cheese that made Charlemagne late for dinner in 774 AD.
- 1 wheelbrie cheese(8 oz)
- 0.5 cupchampagne
- 0.25 cupdried apricots(diced)
- 0.25 cupgolden raisins
- 0.25 cupsliced almonds(toasted)
- 2 tbsphoney
- 1 tspfresh thyme leaves
- 0.25 tspflaky sea salt
Fruit can be soaked in champagne up to 3 days ahead. Assemble and bake just before serving.
- 1Soak apricots and raisins in champagne for at least 1 hour, preferably overnight
- 2Preheat oven to 350°F
- 3Place brie in small baking dish or on parchment-lined sheet
- 4Drain fruit, reserving champagne
- 5Score top of brie in crosshatch pattern
- 6Top with soaked fruit and almonds
- 7Drizzle with honey
- 8Bake 12-15 minutes until brie is soft and slightly oozy
- 9Drizzle with 1 tablespoon reserved champagne
- 10Sprinkle with thyme and sea salt
- 11Serve immediately with crackers and baguette slices
Use a ripe but not overripe brie - it should give slightly when pressed. The champagne-soaked fruit adds elegant flavor that sets this apart. Score the top rind so the toppings sink into the warm cheese. Serve within 15 minutes of baking for best texture.
Both ingredients at the heart of this dish carry extraordinary lineages. Champagne's documented wine history begins with Roman vineyards planted in the region of northeast France from the 5th century AD or possibly earlier. It was in the city of Reims — the spiritual capital of medieval France — that successive French kings were crowned from 816 to 1825, with the local wine served at coronation banquets, earning champagne the enduring title "wine of kings." The popular story that the Benedictine monk Dom Pérignon invented sparkling champagne is, as Wikipedia states, contrary to fact: the English scientist Christopher Merrett presented a paper to the Royal Society in 1662 describing the process of adding sugar to induce secondary fermentation in the bottle — a full six years before Dom Pérignon joined the Abbey of Hautvillers. Pérignon's genuine contributions were to wine blending and the production of white wine from dark-skinned Pinot noir grapes. Early sparkling champagne was called "le vin du diable" — the devil's wine — because bottles regularly exploded from the pressure. Once the production process was mastered in the 18th century, champagne production expanded rapidly: Wikipedia records growth from 300,000 bottles annually in 1800 to 20 million by 1850. Under EU law, the name Champagne is protected by PDO designation — only sparkling wine from the Champagne region can legally bear the name. Brie comes from the Brie plateau east of Paris, and its story stretches back just as far: the Frankish monk Charlemagne is documented as having encountered and praised the cheese at Brie-en-Brie in 774 AD. At the Congress of Vienna in 1815, Talleyrand's delegation entered it into a tasting competition and it was proclaimed "King of Cheeses." Baked brie itself emerged as an American entertaining staple in the 1980s, when creative hosts began wrapping the wheel in pastry or covering it with sweet and savoury toppings.