St Honore

The Kay family spent four years in Italy and we had a favorite Graticola (“gridiron” restaurant) that we visited weekly. They introduced us to this most wonderful dessert. Light, airy, and truly decadent.

Though St Honore is usually made as a whole cake, we decided to personalize the desserts for our dinner guests and made everyone their own miniature version. The result was a mini castle of puffy perfection for each person.

Okay, with the exception of the lobster ravioli, we managed to make everything else pretty uncomplicated to put together…until now. There are a lot of moving parts, but there are some shortcuts you can take and we’ll let you know what those are, but for the more adventurous of you, the long scenic route is worth the effort to get there.

St Honore

A puff pastry basket filled with vanilla pastry cream and ringed with chocolate cream-filled profiterole attached with caramel syrup and decorated with Amaretto whip cream.

Puff pastry (for basket base)

2 ½ cups cold flour (yes, put it in the fridge, you want it COLD)

¾ tsp salt

3 sticks (24 tbsp/12 oz) cold unsalted butter, cut into pieces

¾ cups very cold water

– or –

Frozen puff pastry sheets (skip down to preparing the pastry base instructions if you go this route). Just follow directions below for cutting out shapes and bake according to package directions.

The reason that you want all of your ingredients to be cold is so they will blend, not stick, when you work it with your fingers. In fact, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to run your hands under cold water before you begin to work the pastry to help keep your body temp from making things too mooshy.

Mix the flour and salt then sift them onto the cut butter. Work them together until they form a crumbly mixture. Flatten as many of the butter lumps as you can with your fingers. Begin adding in the water a little bit at a time. You want the dough to be smooth and even, not sticky. If it gets sticky, add a bit more flour to it.

Once your pastry dough has reached the desired consistency, put the pastry dough in the fridge to cool for at least 30 minutes.

Making the pastry layers – you do this using the roll-fold-fold method. Roll out the dough to about ½” thickness then fold a third of it over onto itself and the other third over that (like tri-folding a letter). Roll it out again then fold a third, then fold the other third. Roll-fold-fold, roll-fold-fold, repeat. You can do this as many times as you like. The more often you do it, the more pastry layers you create.

Preparing the pastry base – roll out the dough to about ¼” thickness and cut out two 4” circles (two circles per dessert). Using a 3” cutter, cut out the center of one of the two circles and keep the outer edge; this will be your “basket” rim, the inside part can be re-rolled to make other bases. Brush the edge of the full circle with water and set the rim piece on top.

Bake at 375° for 15-20 minutes until puffy and golden. Remove from oven and transfer to a rack to cool.

 

For better process photos for the puff pastry, check out this link: http://www.finecooking.com/articles/how-to/rough-puff-pastry.aspx.

We used a 4” ridged tart pan for our base and then a 3” ridged cookies cut to remove the center. You can use round cookie cutters or even deep-edged storage container lids.

Vanilla pastry cream

2/3 cup sugar
2 tbsp cornstarch
2 tbsp flour (all purpose)
pinch of salt
4 egg yolks or 2 whole eggs
2 cups milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp butter

– or –

your favorite pre-made, or mix and make, vanilla pudding

Stir the sugar, cornstarch, flour and salt together in the bottom of a heavy saucepan.

Whisk the milk and eggs together. Add them to the dry mixture in the saucepan and blend well until sugar is dissolved.

Over medium heat, cook mixture for 12 minutes. Stir occasionally for the first 5 minutes then stir constantly for the last 7 minutes until it thickens and comes to a boil. Boil for 1 minute while stirring then remove saucepan from heat and stir in vanilla and butter.

Pour the pastry cream into a bowl. Let it cool then cover and refrigerate until ready to use.

If you press a piece of Saran over the cream before you put it in the fridge, it will prevent a skin from forming on the top.

Chocolate pastry cream

3-4 oz. semi-sweet chocolate, melted

Follow the same instructions for the vanilla cream and add in melted chocolate after you stir in the vanilla and butter.

– or –

your favorite pre-made, or mix and make, chocolate pudding

Choux paste (for profiteroles)

For the choux paste recipe and how to photos, refer back to http://theculinarycreative.blogspot.com/2010/04/puff-magic-dessert-ring.html.

– or –

you can buy frozen pre-made cream puffs, thaw them and use them to top the puff basket

Instead of spooning the dough into a ring shape, take a pastry bag with a round tip and squeeze out (3D) quarter-sized “puffs” (profiteroles) onto a cookie sheet. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you can use a zip lock bag. Fill with the dough and then snip open a corner to squeeze it out through.

Bake at 425° for 25-30 minutes until golden brown. Turn off oven and allow centers to dry.

Once they are cooled, poke a small hole in the bottom of the puff. Fill a pastry bag with the chocolate pastry cream and using a fine tip (or zip lock with a smaller corner hole), squeeze the chocolate into the profiterole.

Okay, at this point we're not providing anymore Ors because if you've slid through til this point, it's about time you put some actually work into it. :)

Amaretto whip cream

1 cup heavy whipping cream

2 tbsp sugar

1-2 tbsp Amaretto

Make sure cream is cold, it whips better this way. Using an electric blender, whip until cream makes soft peaks, add in the sugar and continue whipping until it forms hard peaks. Slowly mix in Amaretto to flavor.

Caramel syrup

¾ cup sugar

¼ cup water

Combine sugar and water in a small heavy saucepan. Boil over medium heat. Cook until syrup turns amber in color.

Assembly

Fill the center of the puff pastry basket with the vanilla pastry cream.

Dip the bottom of the chocolate-filled profiterole in the hot caramel syrup and attach to the edge of the basket.

Evenly space out the profiteroles (about 5 per basket) and fill in the spaces between with Amaretto whip cream.

Present to guests and enjoy the oohs and aahs before total silence descends.