Cake 4: St. Honore Cake

My most recent cake was a bit of a departure from my usual layer cakes. I decided to make St. Honoré Cake, so named for the patron saint of bakers. It consists of puff pastry toped with circles of choux paste as a base, filled with a pastry cream and topped with caramel-dipped cream puffs and whipped cream.

The puff pastry takes the longest, but it’s not actually too difficult. A slab of butter is sealed in the pastry, then the packages is rolled out, folded, and chilled. This process is repeated several times so the butter is distributed in fine layers throughout the pastry, which is what makes is rise and have such a light, flaky texture. I enjoyed working with it, especially as I finally succeeded in rolling something out into a regular, rectangular shape. (The trick is to begin by pressing, not rolling, evenly along the length of the dough.)

The choux pastry and pastry cream both came together without much effort—it takes bit of elbow grease to beat the eggs into the choux pastry, but my puffs weren’t any the worse for the still slightly lumpy batter. When it came time to bake the cake, I made the mistake of pressing on the sides of the puff pastry round to make it more even, which glues the layers together and keep them from puffing up. My cake recovered admirably, though, and rose quite grandly, I thought.

The most difficult part of this cake was definitely the caramelized cream puffs. My first trouble came trying to fill them. Without an actually pastry bag and tip, my bag-with-the-corner-cut-off stand-in was too flaccid to force the cream into the tiny openings in the bottom of the puffs. I solved this by cutting larger holes in the bottoms, but this created another problem, that of the cream leaking out into the caramel as they were being dipped.

That, however, didn’t end up being a major problem. It two knives, two pots, a couple of burns, and quite a lot of time, but eventually they all got dipped. I stuck a skewer into the bottom, then tipped the pot with the other hand to pool the caramel, swirled the cream puff around and then plopped in on a pan to harden.

I made half of the recipe found here, to make 1 8” cake (and 8” circle is about half the area of an 11” circle). That was about twice the amount of puff pastry needed (the rest turned into tasty palmiers) and made 15 or so extra cream puffs. The pastry cream was the perfect amount to fill the cake and all the puffs, and the caramel was just right too.

And the finished product, was, well, fabulous. I’m a real sucker for contrasting textures, and this cake is perfect for that. The puff is so light and flaky and just falls apart in your mouth, whereas the choux pastry is a little springier, with a little more resistance. Top that with a perfectly smooth pastry cream, buoyed by gelatin so it’s not too runny—it doesn’t run off the sides of the slices, but it’s still absolutely creamy. And then finish that off with crisp, crackly caramel enrobing a dollop of the same cream encased in pastry, alternating with whipped cream. And that’s just the texture.

The flavors are wonderful too. Neither the choux pastry nor the puff pastry is at all sweetened, so the cream never seems cloying. The richness and depth of the caramel flavor tempers its sweetness, and the whipped cream is only lightly sweetened so it balances, rather than competes with, the pastry cream. The pastry cream is flavored only by vanilla, which again cuts its sweetness. This balance, of flavor and texture, makes the many part construction of the cake well worth all the effort.

Catch-Up

Well, it may have been a time since I’ve updated this blog, but I am nearly on schedule with making the cakes. For May 18-31, I made another foray into Southern baking. My original plan had been to do something a bit more exotic—there’s a cake on epicurious that blends chocolate with wasabi, and though it made my roommates cringe, I was up for the risks. However, I ended up perusing an old issue of Gourmet which focused on Southern cooking, and was taken by the Mile High Chocolate Cake.

It was superb. Relatively quick and simple; it’s the perfect birthday or celebration cake for someone who wants a very chocolatey cake but one that’s light enough so you eat an entire satisfying slice. The cake is rich but the texture is delicate. The sour cream makes it moist and but still sturdy enough to hold up to the rich frosting. The cake comes together easily, and doesn’t fall apart when you slice it into layers. The layers came out of the pans with little muffin tops, but were tall enough to split even with the tops cut off.

The frosting, another butter roux icing, was similarly delicious. It ended up quite different from the vanilla frosting from the red velvet cake. In this frosting, the sugar is cooked with the milk, rather than being creamed with the butter. This may have helped the frosting be less sticky and more uniform than the red velvet icing. Although this icing was terrific, it didn’t have the pillowy lightness I had been expecting after the previous cake. I think that was mainly due to the chocolate—there’s so much in the icing that it totally dominates the other elements. Except the butter. I might cut back on that next time.

The icing was excellent, and went well with the cake—as I said before, it’s the perfect chocolate-lover’s cake. But I was hoping for more of a light, fluffy foil to the intensity of the cake. Next time, I will play around with adding chocolate to the red velvet cake icing.

For June 1-14, I went a different direction, opting for a coconut-lime-ginger cake. I’m not a big fan of coconut, but as the coconut was just on the outside of the cake, I opted simply to leave it out. The cake consisted of vanilla buttermilk layers sandwiched with a lime ginger curd and finished with a marshmallow frosting. I’m a big fan of citrus curd, but I’d never made it before. I didn’t have any trouble with the curd for this recipe, but I think I must have grated some of the lime peel a bit too far into the pith, as I found the curd had a bit of a bitter undertone. I added a bit extra sugar to counterbalance this.

I also found that the ginger flavor didn’t come out at all. I love ginger (I’ve been known to eat pieces raw and plain) and I could have done with at least four times the tablespoon specified in the recipe. Still, the curd was delicious as a plain lime curd.

The cake layers were moist and tender, but wholly unremarkable. Allie liked them, but I would be unlikely to use them in another cake. I found that, as with many buttermilk cakes (or rather, cakes leavened with baking soda) that aren’t chocolate, there was a mild soda after-tone, which diminished when the layers were combined with the other elements.

The marshmallow frosting didn’t work out as well. Firstly, I broke the cardinal rule of meringue-type icings, and made it on a rainy day. The frosting is whipped over hot water, and I think I may have violated the second cardinal rule by allowing the water to touch the bottom of the bowl at points. The frosting turned out well, but a lot was crystallized in the bottom of the bowl. It was fluffy and sweet but not cloyingly so. Especially when paired with the tart lime curd, it perfectly balanced the flavors in the cake.

Allie's camera was on loan, so I had to take a picture with the camera on my computer. Not bad, eh?

However, after a short time, the top of the frosting hardened into a crust, though the underside stayed soft. Though I found the cake to be delicious, perhaps not my favorite, but still good, my roommates were less impressed, and therefore it has hung around the house for longer than it should have. As time passed, the frosting completely hardened into a shell that cracked off the cake when cut. It still continued to taste good, even with this bizarre change in texture.

All in all, it wasn’t exactly the greatest success, but far from a failure. We’ll see if I manage to catch up on cakes in the next month or so. I should have had one done last weekend, and I’m hoping to get it done this weekend instead. But when I do get it done, I’ll try tpo get it up a little more promptly!