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.
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