French · Dessert
Paris-Brest
The bicycle-wheel choux crown piped with hazelnut praliné mousseline — a patisserie rite of passage; make the praliné in-house and it sings
- Prep
- 60 min
- Cook
- 45 min
- Serves
- 8
Ingredients
- Choux: water 90 ml, milk 90 ml, butter 80 g, salt 3 g, sugar 5 g, flour 110 g, eggs ~3.5 (190 g)
- Flaked almonds — 30 g
- Praliné: hazelnuts 150 g, caster sugar 100 g, salt 1 g
- Mousseline: whole milk 400 ml, egg yolks 4 (80 g), caster sugar 80 g, cornflour 35 g, unsalted butter (soft) 180 g
- Icing sugar — 15 g
Method
- Praliné: toast hazelnuts at 160 °C, 12 min; cook sugar dry to amber, pour over nuts on a mat; cool, then blitz 4–5 min to a fluid paste with salt.
- Crème pâtissière: whisk yolks, sugar, cornflour; whisk in hot milk; cook, whisking, 2 min past the first boil. Press film on; chill.
- Choux: standard panade (boil liquids/butter, beat in flour, dry, add eggs to a slow V).
- Pipe two concentric 20 cm rings plus one on top of the seam (or 8 individual crowns); scatter almonds.
- Bake at 175 °C fan 40–45 min until deep bronze and dry; cool completely.
- Mousseline: beat the smooth cold pâtissière; beat in soft butter in stages, then 180 g praliné — it should be light and pipeable.
- Split the ring; pipe tall rosettes of mousseline; hide a spoon of raw praliné in each rosette valley; re-lid, dust.