Paris-Brest Custard Cake

"Make sure you check out her mom's boob job. They're hard as rocks."
                     -- Gretchen

The first post, like the pilot episode, is a crap shoot. I’m making this up as I go and look forward to hating my earlier posts in six months. Until I find my stride, reading this blog is going to be similar to watching a blind man direct traffic. I’d apologize, but your discomfort isn’t important to me, and as a Bradley, I do everything I can to avoid admitting my mistakes.

I looked it up, and I cannot legally post recipes without the author’s permission. Which is a shame since I hate food blogs that don’t provide recipes. I’ll look into loopholes.

This week I chose to make a Paris-Brest Custard Cake. As the photos might indicate, there were many boob jokes to be had. The story goes that the pastry was designed to celebrate a bicycle race between the cities of Paris and Brest. That’s why it looks like a breast bike wheel. I got the recipe from “Butter Sugar Flour Eggs,” an excellent dessert cookbook by Gale Gand, Rick Tramonto, and Julia Moskin. I’m going to post numerous recipes from this book, not just because the food looks good but also because the writers are… eccentric. Each ingredient has its own chapter, complete with a “personality profile.” Those readers who know me personally are probably aware of my tendency to name inanimate objects, but even I don’t give butter a full battery of psychological tests. (Sentence one of the profile: “Butter is a true aristocrat – and a modest one.”)

This is definitely not something one throws together just as company is walking in the door. It took me about four hours to bake and assemble, and in the process I decimated the kitchen. It looked like I’d beaten a giant cream puff to death with every spoon and bowl I own.

Things started simply enough. I made a standard pastry dough. For those who have never made a pâte à choux, it’s actually quite fun. You melt butter and sugar together, and then dump flour into the hot liquid. You cook and stir like crazy until the lumps are gone and a thick paste forms. Then you furiously beat in several eggs. The whole process takes ten minutes if you know what you’re doing. This mixture was scraped into a ziplock bag. I snipped off a corner and piped the dough into a ring. This was then brushed with a beaten egg and sprinkled with sliced almonds.

Into the oven it went, to bake for almost an hour. Meanwhile, I pulled out pastry cream that I had made the night before. It’s always a good idea to do this; it gives the cream plenty of time to set and get really cold. Unfortunately, it makes for a very unappealing (and unexpectedly yellow) photo. I poured the cream into another ziplock bag and let it sit on the counter while the pastry ring baked.

I have a terrible tendency to underbake foods, something that only fuels my love of doughy rolls and essentially raw cookies. The pastry ring probably could have used another ten minutes in the oven. The main leavening in a pâte à choux is steam, so if you don’t bake the dough completely you end up with a damp pastry shell. I just can’t bring myself to care because I always end up filling pâte à choux with custard or pastry cream, making it difficult to notice a damp pastry shell.

I took a serrated edge and sliced off the very top of the baked ring. The hollow ring was then filled with the pastry cream. The improvised piping bag made even distribution simple, and I’m just compulsive enough to care about the pattern in the cream. I’m always tempted to eat pastry cream right out of the bag, but the image is a little too Freudian.

Two cups of heavy cream were quickly turned into whipped cream, which was slathered over the pastry cream. Without the browned top, this dessert is whiter than I am.

With the top on it looked gorgeous. In case you’re wondering, the little central cream puff didn’t make it because I got hungry. It made the perfect vehicle for about half a cup of pastry cream and an equally hearty dollop of whipped cream. It gave its life in service to its creator, and I salute its bravery.

As might be expected, this thing did not slice up neatly. I tried a serrated blade and a chef’s knife. Both cut through the baked shell, but the resulting slice looked like a squashed cockroach with cream oozing out of all sides. Fortunately, powdered sugar hides all venial sins. It’s the communion of dessert making

Overall, I’d call the dish a success. I’d make it again, but only for a party. My mother, sister, and I barely ate half of it before the whipped cream had deflated and it had to be tossed.