Patisserie 10: Paris-Brest/ Praline buttercream choux pastry

 Since the previous recipe contained a fair amount of hazelnuts and originated the hazelnut praline in this recipe, I decided it would be reasonable to do this one immediately after to decrease making small batches of niche ingredients. 

The Paris-Brest is a circular choux ring that is covered in almonds and filled with praline cream of some sort. The pastry was commissioned to commemorate the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race, which is a long-distance race between the two cities and back, and the circular shape of the pastry is meant to evoke a bicycle wheel. Variations in the filling are common, ranging from diplomat cream (stabilized whipped cream) to pure buttercream and everything in between, though the praline (caramelized hazelnut) is a typical base flavor. The version in The Book uses a mousseline cream, which is what you call buttercream + pastry cream + a flavoring (in this case, praline). 

Patisserie 8: St Honore Cake/Gâteau St. Honoré

 So, I'm a little early on this because St. Honoré’s feast day is on May 16, but this seemed like a good recipe to try due to my previous logic that a lot of good fruit ingredients are not in season yet, I had a small amount of puff pastry still left from my first batch, and this "cake" is more like a composition of puff pastry, choux pastry, and caramelized sugar, filled with pastry cream, and thus a good bridge as I transition from making small pastries into the cakes. 

St Honore is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, who did some miracles in French lore, and this cake is apt because of its composition, which showcases several french pastry basics: puff pastry/lamination, choux pastry, pastry cream, caramel, and meringue. The presentation varies, but these components are always somewhere included, and there is an additional traditional component: The St Honore piping tip. This tip is used to create the elegant waves in the Chiboust (combination pastry and meringue) cream filling, and the shape is something like a quenelle with a mohawk. After reading reviews that most people liked the medium sized 882 tip from Ateco, but not wanting to make a web order for a single piping tip, I decided to use my 3D printer to print a piping tip. 

Patisserie 6: Apple Almond Danishes

 As I mentioned at the end of my post revisiting tartlets, I feel comfortable moving on from this section, but I was concerned about many of the classic cakes having dependency on berries or other soft summer fruit that was not currently in season. I am currently rolling in an abundance of apples, and I still had those cranberries from the fruit tart I made at the beginning of this month, so I have decided to wrap up this first month of patisserie with a spot of viennoiserie in the form of apple danishes with almond cream. This recipe is technically from the brioche and breakfast pastries section, but as I am pretty experienced with brioche at this point from previous projects and have done two lamination recipes this month, I felt it would be reasonable to try this recipe which combines aspects of both. 

Patisserie 5: Kouign Amann

I decided to make kouign amann because it's such popular classic pastry in recent years, for obvious reasons. I feel like this recipe was a bit of a softball, because it's hard to go wrong with something that's laminated with butter and sugar. But I have some quibbles nonetheless! 

A kouign amann (pronounced like kween a-'mann) is a type of Breton cake, with a yeasted dough that is laminated with butter and sugar and then baked until the sugar caramelizes and the combined steam from the butter and the yeast doing its thing causes the pastry to puff in layers. They're definitely delicious and definitely not good for you. But I had a suspicion I would be able to find enough people to consume the 15 pastries this recipe was going to make.