My first attempt at making something that’s actually intermediate. At this point, I can make chouxs with my hands tied behind my back, but this Paris-Brest was a whole other level of difficulty. Paris-Brest can best be described as a ring of chouxs meant to represent the bicycle tires that France loves so much (think of all the bicycle races there). And the French love bicycle tires so much, they decided to make it into a wretchedly difficult pastry.
I first followed the King Arthur’s recipe for making the chouxs. However, I found that the choux dough was runny in comparison to the flavor bender recipe that I have used in previous creampuff posts. This created a ring that was super spread out and the top layer melted towards the bottom layer.
I actually trashed my first ring made with the KA recipe and redid my batch following the flavor bender’s style. The new batch was perfect. This is slightly disappointing of KA since they have always been my idols, but this is a lesson that not all idols can be followed so blindly.
Jokes aside, I do have a lot that I want to improve in my future trial of this pastry.
⁃ make each choux way way smaller
– Make chouxs very tall
⁃ Use the other recipe for the choux buns, they are less viscous
⁃ Do not open the oven until they are golden brown!!
⁃ Let them cool in the oven after they are done so as to not deflate them
⁃ Bake them for longer at a lower temperature at 350 degrees in oven, expect at least 30 minutes to up to 45 mins (this is a guess)
⁃ For the filling, sift the powdered sugar into the cream
