St. Honoré au chocolat


'St. Honoré' is a French dessert, made with profiterole, filled with pastry cream, or Diplomate cream, or whipped cream, mount on a puff pastry round and decorated with whipped cream. For the love of chocolate and for the approaching St. Valentine, I topped my ginormous individual 'St. Honoré's with chocolate discs and piped chocolate mouse. Honouring the original recipe, I filled the profiteroles with Diplomate cream.

Here is the sequence of my three day work on the desert:

Day 1:

1. Prepare the puff pastry (giving it 4 folds).
2. Make the chocolate discs and chocolate hearts (and other piped decorations).

Day 2:

1. Give the puff pastry 2 more folds.
2. Prepare the biscuits for the profiteroles tops.
3. Prepare and bake the profiteroles. 


Day 3:

1. Make the cream Diplomate.
2. Make the chocolate mouse.
3. Bake the puff pastry round bases.
4. Fill the profiteroles.
5. Assemble the dessert.


I made 30 profiteroles - each one about 5 cm piped. They expanded during baking and reached 6.5 -7 cm. For the 8 St. Honoré cakes, I used 24 profiteroles and baked 8 puff pastry rings.

for the profiteroles:

175 g all purpose flour
30 g sugar
240 g water
120 g butter
2 g salt
250 g eggs


1. Combine the water, butter and salt in a heavy bottomed pan over medium heat. Stir, until the butter melts. Make sure the water doesn't become to a boil.
2. Have the flour sifted. Preheat the oven to 190C convection.
3. Once the butter has melted, increase the heat and bring the water to a simmer. Remove from the heat and stir in all the flour. Stir for about 2 min until the dough is formed. Returned back to the medium heat and stir for a minute or two. 
4. Transfer the dough to a mixer bowl and with a paddle attachment, stir for 30 sec. 
5. Beat the eggs with a fork. Add them to the dough in three additions, stirring well after each one. 
6. Transfer the mixture in a piping bag with a round tip and pipe 30 profiteroles on a lined with parchment paper (or silicon mat) cookie pan. Top with the biscuits.
7. Place the pan in a hot oven and reduce the temperature immediately to 175C. Bake for 25-30 min. Rotate the pan half way through the baking.
8. Reduce the temperature to 160C and bake for another 10 min.
9. Transfer the profiteroles on a wire rack to cool.
10. Refrigerate overnight in a closed container. 
11. Fill them with Diplomat creme the next day and serve the same day.



Comments

Lynn | The Road to Honey said…
What a whimsical little desert sure to impress all that lay eyes on it.
http://www.theroadtohoney.com
3 February 2015 at 20:00
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lebkuchen Houses

Image
Traditions are sculpted by the memories of the people. For some traditions is particularly easy to cross time and geographical borders, because of the taste. The well known gingerbread houses today are the young ancestors of the lebkuchen houses, born in Germany two hundred years ago, when Brothers Grimm wrote "Hansel and Gretel". German bakers were inspired by the descriptive story and freed their imagination into baking differently shaped and coloured small and big delicious houses.  Decorated with candies, small cookies, chocolate pieces and lots of icing, the houses are extremely appealing not only because of their whimsical appearance, but because of the heavenly aroma of the spices as well. Make this in advance and you will have Christmas feeling all season long.  I chose to bake lebkuchen houses because of the variety of spices used in the recipe . My houses are gently decorated with white royal icing and I did not use any candies. I like this way of decor
Read more

Rustico Buttergipfel

Image
55 g unsalted butter I 225 g unsalted butter II 30 g flour 15 g cold water 7 g dry yeast 20 ml lukewarm water 160 ml col water 14 g malt syrup , or 30 g dark honey 12 g salt 1 large egg 380 g flour My Grandma used to "toast" the butter for almost every pastry - either at the time of preparing or just before serving. It gave just a small "intonation" of difference to the colour but such a complete finish to the taste. At the time I did not care what and why she did that - to me it was just an extra unnecessary work. Later on at the university I realized how the separation works and what a difference it makes to the taste. French call it beurre noisette and use it mostly for pastry and savoury hot sauces, Indians call it ghee and cook mainly with it, in Germany and in the German part of Switzerland, chefs use this "toasty" butter for the buttergipfels .  The process is a simple separation into butterfat and milk solids, called clarificat
Read more

Old-fashioned Lebkuchen Stars and Hearts

Image
This is the classic recipe for Christmas Cookies from old Germany, or Switzerland (if you'd prefer). A recipe, I was hoping to find for a long time. Thanks to Sara Kelly Iaia and her fine memories, collected in the book "Festive Baking", I am happy to bake the first cookies for this Christmas. The honey and the quantity of the fragrant spices make these cookies unique. I would advise not to skip any of the spices or to change their quantity. I am pretty conservative when it comes to perfumed spices. I think the simpler ingredients make one dish tastier. But here, the spices are in perfect unison.   for the cookies: 490 g all purpose flour 1 tsp baking soda 1 tsp baking powder 1 Tbsp cinnamon 1 tsp cardamom 1/2 tsp ground cloves 1/2 tsp powdered anise 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg 1/2 tsp ginger 225 g honey 160 g light brown sugar 134 g unsalted butter 1 large egg 1. Sift the flour in a bowl. 2. In another bowl, sift all
Read more