The ancient Christians of Europe had patron saints for everything and everyone, from thieves to computer scientists. There is René Goupil for anaesthesiologists, St Martha for dietitians and St Lidwina for ice skaters, I kid you not. The 16th century Bishop of Amiens, St Honoré, is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, having performed many miracles with bread. The St Honoré Cake is one of the culinary marvels of the Gallic palate, and its making is as complicated as a catechism.
Its construction is elaborate and masterly. The gateau has a circular puff pastry base filled with creme chiboust. The base’s outer ring is decorated with a piping of pâte a choux—profiteroles that are pastry balls filled with whipped cream, custard, pastry cream, or ice cream; these are dipped in caramelised sugar and attached along the side of the circle.
The cake is then finished with whipped cream using a special St Honoré piping tip. St Honoré is credited with inventing choux in 1847—a delicate puff pastry made with butter, watermelon flour and eggs, made at the Chiboust bakery on the Paris street that bears his name, Rue Saint-Honoré, a stretch once lined with patisseries and bakeries. Larousse Gastronomique, an authoritative encyclopaedia of French cuisine, claims that the real inventor of the St Honoré Cake was the pastry chef Chiboust who worked on Rue Saint-Honoré in 1846. The cream in the gâteau, a blend of traditional pastry cream and Italian meringue, gets its name from him.
St Honoré was born Honoratus in an aristocratic family near Amiens. Understanding the history of a country is best done from the driving seat of a motor car. St Honore’s bishopric Amiens, called the ‘Venice of the North’, is a 160-odd km upcountry drive from Paris for about two hours. It is a magical mediaeval city with floating gardens and a network of canals along which you can float on a barge or eat a cake at a canal side cafe on a cobblestone street.
The Amiens cathedral boasts the tallest nave in all of France and is a repository of Gothic and renaissance art. The tiny commune of Port-le-Grand, where St Honoré was born, is about five kilometres away—the tree-lined River Austreberthe runs through it serenely. St Honoré is depicted in church iconography holding a baker’s peel or loaves of bread. Some stepping stones of history are epicurean legends. Baking historian Steven Laurence Kaplan attributes the bishop’s fame to St Honoré chapel, once the headquarters of the Guild of Parisian bakers. The French Revolution put an end to all guilds and the saint lapsed into obscurity but not without a final miracle—the lasting popularity of his little cake.
No other nation has transformed gastronomy into a complicated fine art like the French with charming legends, exotic pronunciation, complicated wine drinking rituals and menu construction. Demystifying a popular dessert is the best way to make one. Even if it is a mystical creation like gateau St Honoré.
Pâte a Choux
Ingredients
✥ 8 ounces cold water
✥ 4 ounces (1 stick) unsalted butter, cubed
✥ ½ teaspoon sea salt
✥ 1 tablespoon white sugar
✥ 4.7 ounces all-purpose flour, sifted
✥ 8 ounces eggs (this is usually about 3 to 4 large eggs)
Special Equipment
✥ Piping bags and tips
✥ Preheat the oven to 375° F. Add the butter, water, milk, salt, and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Stir frequently to make sure the butter has melted and the sugar and salt have dissolved before it’s begun to boil.
✥ Remove the saucepan from the heat and stir in the flour with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon. Keep stirring until the flour has absorbed the water and there
are no lumps.
✥ When it’s starting to become a dough, move the saucepan back on the stove. Cook the dough over medium heat for 1 to 3 minutes. You’ll know it’s ready when you can stand a spoon upright in it. Put aside the dough in a bowl and let it cool for a few minutes.
✥ In a separate bowl, beat the eggs. Using a stand-mixer on a very low speed, hand-held mixer, or whisk to mix in the eggs into the cooled dough, one at a time (one egg is about a ¼ cup once beaten) until the dough is shiny, thick, and smooth. To test, run your finger through the dough. If the trail holds and the dough doesn’t collapse, it’s ready. Add the dough to a piping bag with a ½ inch tip.
✥ Pipe 2-inch discs about 3 inches apart on the baking sheet. Wet the back of a spoon and smooth over any peaks. Spray or brush the parchment paper with water. Save a bit of the dough in the piping bag and place in the fridge.
✥ Bake for 30 to 40 minutes in the oven’s centre. After 25 minutes, open the oven and pierce each pastry with a toothpick to allow the humid air inside to escape.
Do not open the oven before then.
✥ After 5 to 10 minutes in the oven, remove and cool.
✥ Store them in an airtight container for up to 24 hours or freeze.
Choux Puffs
Ingredients
✥ 9 ounces all-purpose flour
✥ 1 teaspoon salt
✥ 10 ounces unsalted butter
(2 1/2 sticks), cold
✥ 1/2 cup cold water
Instructions
✥ Preheat the oven to 400° F. Sift the flour and salt into a bowl and whisk until combined.
✥ Slice the butter into 1/4-inch pieces. Toss with the flour mixture.
✥ Add cold water and stir until it takes on a doughy consistency. ✥ Ball the dough, then flatten it into a disc, and wrap it up. Chill for 20 minutes in the freezer.
✥ On a floured surface, roll the chilled disc of dough into a rectangle then fold it into thirds. Rotate the folded dough 90 degrees, then roll and fold again.
✥ Repeat this process one more time. Chill the dough in the fridge for at least 2 hours before using.
✥ Remove the dough from the fridge and roll into an 8-inch disc about 1/8-inch thick. Prick the dough with a fork to make sure it doesn’t puff up too much.
✥ Pipe the choux pastry in a ring around the edge of the puff pastry.Bake for 25-30 minutes, checking until it is golden brown.
Chiboust Cream
✥ Make a standard creme pâtissiere and Italian meringue. Combine at a 2:1 ratio of Italian meringue to creme pâtissiere.
Gâteau
✥ Fill a piping bag with the Chiboust cream. In a small saucepan, warm up some caramel.
✥ Dip each choux pastry ball into the warm caramel to coat its bottom. Use this as your glue to stick each ball in a ring around your puff pastry. Drizzle caramel over the top of each ball. Once the choux ring is done, pipe the Chiboust cream into the center.
Recipe courtesy: Sam O’Brien