Saint-Honoré Cake
Ingredients
- 1 disc of puff pastry, plus extra choux pastry piped as a ring and small puffs
- Choux pastry: 125 ml water, 125 ml milk, 110 g butter, 150 g flour, 4 eggs, salt, sugar
- Crème Chiboust: milk, vanilla, egg yolks, sugar, cornstarch, gelatin leaves, egg whites for Italian meringue
- Caramel: sugar, water, a little glucose syrup
Named for the patron saint of bakers and created in the 1800s by a pastry chef on Rue Saint-Honoré in Paris, this cake pairs a puff pastry base with a ring of small choux puffs, each dipped in caramel and stuck around the edge. The center is piped high with crème Chiboust — a pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue and set with gelatin — giving it a texture between mousse and custard.
Method
Bake the puff pastry disc until golden and crisp; pipe a ring of choux around its edge plus small individual puffs on a separate tray, and bake until golden and firm.
Make a vanilla pastry cream base with milk, egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch; soften gelatin in cold water and stir into the hot cream to dissolve.
Whip egg whites and sugar into an Italian meringue, then fold into the warm pastry cream to make the crème Chiboust; use promptly, as it sets as it cools.
Fill the small choux puffs with some of the Chiboust cream.
Make a caramel by cooking sugar, water and glucose to a deep amber, then dip the tops of the filled puffs in the caramel and stick them, caramel-side up, around the edge of the pastry base.
Pipe or spoon the remaining Chiboust cream into the center of the base, mounding it generously, and chill until set.
