If St. Honore is the patron saint of pastry chefs, I wonder what this Gateau St. Honore symbolizes…

Admittedly, it’s a silly cake. But addictive. I’d only had it in tart form before, notably at Bouchon Bakery. Its base is a round of puff pastry, and choux pastry is piped around the border and in a spiral inside. It is then baked, and when cool, filled with creme chiboust (pronounced shi-boost). Creme chiboust is made by combining hot pastry cream and hot italian meringue, which takes a little bit of coordination; two people started them at the same time and aimed to finish at the same time. On the outside are profiteroles dipped once on each side in caramel that dries crisp so that one end gets a little hat and the other end sticks to the main pastry. The ones that I’d had before were smaller so that you could comfortably pop the whole thing in your mouth… and it crackles with caramel before the creme chibouste explodes out from the soft choux pastry and it all melts away. Whipped cream is piped on top of the creme chiboust using a special tip that has a slit in it so that it comes out like a robust mohawk. We finished it with chocolate shavings and a sprinking of powdered sugar (which we are told helps the contours of the choc shavings pop out). A cross section looks like this:

Some research on the internet shows that St Honore was the Bishop of Amiens in France. He died in 653 AD, and his feast day is May 16. This site says: “During his service a number of miraculous events occurred, which spared farmers, millers, and bakers from natural disasters. Residents of France connected the miracles with Bishop Honoré and in 1204 a Parisian baker built a chapel to commemorate him. Today, the chapel is no longer standing, but the name, Saint Honoré, is etched in a gate leading to Faubourg and Rue Saint Honoré in the heart of Paris.” Answers.com further adds that pastry chef Chiboust is rumoured to have created this cake in his Paris shop in 1846… over 1,100 years after his death. And maybe he knew something about St. Honore’s wacky style that I don’t…

Anyway, the caramelized profiteroles are the gem of this cake. We served this for a classmate’s birthday, and by the end, all the edges and profiteroles were torn off, leaving a ragged creamy center on the platter. No picture of that… It was too brutal.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 14th, 2006 at 5:24 pm and is filed under Culinary School. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.