I tried a couple of versions of the Paris-Brest in Paris, which inspired the one I made this week using the recipe from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook. Thomas Keller’s take on the pastry incorporates peanut butter in the pastry cream for an American flair.
After making cream puffs last week from the Bouchon Bakery cookbook, this week’s project involved cream puffs and fondant to make a stacked puff that in the book is named Miss Daisy because she has little fondant daisies on her ensemble. I made mine Parisian and gave her a chocolate fondant petticoat with pearl button closures and a beret. Her bag doesn’t resemble any designer in particular but I’ll just say it’s a Birkin bag. The inspiration for the theme came from Chef Dominique Ansel.
One of my favorite things to make is pate a choux. I like watching the dough instantly come together after adding the flour to the pot. Pastry nerd alert. Then after piping them into cream puff or eclair shapes, they puff up so beautifully in the oven. The one thing I’ve never been able to master is getting the puffs to have smooth edges, until now. The Bouchon Bakery recipe is great.
Toasting meringue is one of my favorite things to do in pastry. I like how the completely white meringue canvas changes instantaneously to a deep golden. The photograph of the lemon meringue tart in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook is particularly striking in that you can still see the residual smoke atop of the meringue. As for the interior, what makes this recipe special is the addition of a cake layer in between the lemon curd and the meringue. It’s like having two classic desserts in one – a hybrid tart and Baked Alaska.
