Gâteau St. Honoré

This is a really nice cake, light looking but with a lot of components to it that make it taste quite rich and balanced. It also incorporates a lot of different elements to build it so it is a nice practice of varying techniques.

Formula*: yields one 8" cake
20 oz. Blitz puff pastry
1# 8 oz. Pâte à Choux (you will have extra)
3# 4 oz. Pastry Cream**
10 oz. Whip cream
4 oz. Caramel

Tools: large piping bag, 804 tip, heat resistant spatula, whisk, docking tool or fork, brush, St. Honoré tip, sauce pan, mixer, stainless steel bowl, 8" cake card, 8" charlotte ring
*This formula is modified from Gisslen, Professional Baking Ed. 5, pg. 367
**Full recipe of pastry cream in Gisslen, Pg. 271


MOP: assembled
Make and cool Pâte à Choux. You want the Pâte à Choux to be at room temperature so you can pipe it. Make sure that you cover it with plastic, touching the paste, so that a crust does not form. Can be chilled or cooled at room temperature.

Dust your work table generously with bread flour. Roll out the puff pastry, turning often so that the butter does not stick to your table, to the 1/8" thick. Make sure that the pastry is rolled out large enough to fill a 8" ring. Use a docking tool (or a fork if you dont have a docking tool) to mark the pastry generously. With the docking tool roll horizontally and vertically. Let the pastry rest for a minute so it will better hold its shape.

Use the 8" Charlotte ring and press down, like a cookie cutter, in the docked puff pastry. Transfer your 8" puff pastry circle onto a parchment lined sheet pan.
Using your 804 tip and piping bag, pipe a thick circle of Pâte à Choux around the edge of the puff pastry circle, about 1" thick band. Pipe a smaller circle of Pâte à Choux creating a bulls-eye look on top of the Pâte à Choux.

With the remaining Pâte à Choux use your 804 tip and a piping bag, pipe small 3/4" cream puff (also called Profiterole) style bulbs with the Pâte à Choux. Make at least 14. With the extra Pâte à Choux pipe extra cream puffs or Éclairs.

Bake at 400°F in a convection oven until it has risen and turned golden, drop the temperature to 275°F and continue baking until it has a uniform golden colour and the cream puffs sound hollow when tapped.

Cool completely.

While this is cooling you can make your whip cream (8 oz. cream, 1.6 oz. sugar, dash of vanilla) Whisk it to a medium peak. Chill until you are ready to use.

Make pastry cream and cool to room temperature.

When puff pastry and cream puffs are cool place the puff pastry circle on top of a 8" cake card. Set aside.

Using the same technique for filling Éclairs fill the cream puff balls with pastry cream. Set aside any Éclairs you might have made and pipe them with any extra pastry cream after you've made the cake.

Make caramel, heat to a golden colour. When caramel is heated turn off heat but keep the saucepan on the burner so the caramel stays warm and liquid. Hold a cream puff from the bottom and dip in caramel, use the cream puff to "glue" the cake to the 8" cake card with the caramel. Set this cream puff aside, caramel side up to use as garnish.

Use this same method to place filled cream puffs around the cake. Place each bulb about 1" apart around the cake symmetrically. To do this, dip the cream puff in caramel and then dab the cake with caramel, carefully turn the cream puff over and glue down on the cake so that the caramel is facing up.


Pipe or fill the center of the cake generously with pastry cream, leaving a thicker amount in the middle to form a hill like shape. The pastry cream should be as high as the bottom of the cream puffs around the outside. If the extra pastry cream has stiffened up slightly use your spatula to smooth it out a little bit.

Using your St. Honoré tip with your piping bag piped a decorative
cursive "L" design down the top of the cake. Make sure the decorative part of the tip is facing up. The colder the whip cream the stiffer your lines are going to be.

Pipe a ridge between each cream puff, around the sides of the cake.

Place an extra caramel dipped cream puff in the center of the cake for garnish.