The recipe for Saint Honoré by Cédric Grolet

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THE SAINT-HONORE

The Saint Honoré is a concentrate of the great French pastry art that impresses with its visuals. From well-buttered puff pastry to chiboust cream and choux pastry, he ticks all the boxes and crowns himself king of cakes.

Invented by the pastry chef Auguste Julien of the Chiboust house in 1847 in Paris in the rue de Saint Honoré. This festive dessert always bears the name of its place of creation.

The Saint Honoré has experienced a nice comeback in recent years, in particular due to the modernization of its dressing by our contemporary pastry chefs. The famous pastry sleeve that allows the realization of this work of art also bears the same name as this cake.

In circles, lengthwise, available in many flavors (chocolate, coffee, hazelnut, fruit) it is always gourmet and sits in the windows of the most beautiful pastries in France such as that of Cédric Grolet in Paris.

Vanilla-caramel Saint Honoré

12 people - preparation 2h45 - cooking 33min - rest 6h

The ingredients of Saint Honoré:

For reverse lamination :

distemper

• 320g of water
• 30g salt
• 7g of white vinegar
• 255g soft butter
• 790g Oatmeal flour

the butter handled

• 840g tourage butter
• 330g oatmeal flour

For the choux pastry :

• 125g of milk
• 125g of water
• 15g trimolin
• 5g of salt
• 110g of butter
• 150g flour
• 4 eggs

For the crumble :

• 50g of butter
• 62g flour
• 62g brown sugar

For the pastry cream :

• 450g of milk
• 50g cream
• 2 vanilla pods
• 90g of sugar
• 25g cream powder
• 25g flour
• 90g of egg yolks
• 30g cocoa butter
• 4 sheets of gelatin
• 50g of butter
• 30g mascarpone

For the caramel :

• 500g of sugar
• 200g of water

For the vanilla whipped cream :

• 500g whipping cream
• 50g mascarpone
• 17g of sugar
• 2 vanilla pods

Cédric Grolet's recipe:

Reverse lamination :

Like Cédric Grolet, make your tempera by mixing the ingredients in a food processor using the sheet tool. Leave to rest for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Make your butter handled using the same process.

Spread the beurre manié and the tempera. Form three identical rectangles, two of butter and one of distemper. Place the tempera in the middle of the two handled butters. Leave to rest for 1 hour in the refrigerator.

Roll out the dough to 2 mm and make a double turn. Refrigerate again for 1 hour. Repeat the operation twice, each time with the same rest time. Roll out the dough one last time and cut out a circle 18 cm in diameter.

Bake it for 30 minutes between two baking sheets in a ventilated oven at 180°C. Turn the plate over and continue cooking for about 15 minutes.

The choux pastry :

In a saucepan , boil the milk, water, trimoline, salt, and butter. Add the flour all at once. Mix, then dry out on the gas. Pour everything into the bowl of a stand mixer.

Mix with the foil tool and add the previously beaten eggs. On a baking sheet, pipe about twenty mini-choux with a no. 6 plain nozzle . Book.

The crumble :

Mix all the crumble ingredients with the foil tool.

Cooking the cabbage :

Roll out between 2 sheets of baking paper to 1.5mm thickness.

Freeze, then cut into rounds 2 cm in diameter. Arrange them on the cabbage. Bake at 180°C for 8 minutes.

The pastry cream :

Infuse the milk and cream with the scraped vanilla pods.

Sieve, then pour the boiling milk over the mixture of sugar, cream powder, flour and previously blanched egg yolks. Boil for 2 minutes.

The particularity of Cédric de Grolet's pastry cream is to add cocoa butter and drained gelatin. Then add the butter, and finish with the mascarpone . Mix and cool quickly. Book cool.

The caramel :

Cook the sugar and water until you get a dark caramel. Glaze the puffs with the caramel, then arrange them in a half-sphere mold 3 cm in diameter, upside down, so that the caramel sets well. Let set for 1 minute.

Vanilla Whipped Cream :

Mix all the ingredients in a mixing bowl. Go up to the beater and reserve in the fridge.

The assembly :

Take the circle of puff pastry , pipe the pastry cream into a circle, leaving a 1 cm border. Fill the puffs with pastry cream.

Place the cabbage all around the Saint-Honoré and smooth the cream. Put the whipped cream in a pocket and, with a Saint-Honoré tip , pipe large regular tears.

Go around several times, piping the tears in staggered rows. Finish by placing a small cabbage in the center.

Chef's Tips:

• Cédric Grolet advises beating the eggs for the choux pastry, which will allow you to incorporate them more easily and to dose them perfectly: as soon as the dough has the right consistency, stop pouring.

• Poaching is quite technical: put a teardrop above the other two of the previous circle. Practice on a plate!

• A good Saint Honoré must combine a super light cream and crispy puff pastry , that's the key. The mistake is to prepare too much in advance: the puff pastry then absorbs moisture and softens.

Our advices :

• Be careful when cooking the cabbage. Don't hesitate to experiment with cooking according to your oven.

• Flavor your Saint Honoré with spices other than vanilla , such as cinnamon, saffron, cardamom or anise for example.

• You can garnish your puffs with fresh or dried fruit to obtain a surprisingly crunchy texture when tasted.

• Try almond, hazelnut, coconut or cashew nut creams to make your chiboust cream .

• Other great French pastry chefs like Cédric Grolet interpreted their own Saint Honoré like Pierre Hermé , Christophe Michalak , Philippe Conticini , Christophe Felder in individual or classic portion.

The important ingredients of this pastry:

Chiboust cream :

Composed for three quarters of pastry cream and one for one quarter of Italian meringue , this cream, once very popular, was the one traditionally used for Saint-Honoré. When it was embellished with praline, you could garnish the paris-brest with it.

Its propensity to turn quickly as soon as it was hot as well as its high sugar content, sometimes considered excessive, are at the origin of the dislike of which it is the object. Chefs today prefer mousseline (pastry cream and butter) or diplomate (pastry cream and whipped cream, sometimes with gelatin) creams.

The butter :

A key ingredient in French pastry, it is undoubtedly one of the reasons for the development of our art for cakes (and the reason why it is so difficult to make high pastry in hot countries). Its quality is essential, both as a vector of taste and for its role in the structure of pastes and creams.

For puff pastry, which requires a dry butter which does not disintegrate when it is spread, there are specific tourage butters whose melting point is higher than that of conventional butter (find information in the specialty stores). For a brioche on the other hand, we will look for a soft soft butter that will integrate well with the dough.

As a general rule, do not hesitate to choose a butter of high quality, organic or benefiting from an AOC such as Isigny or Charente-Poitou. It makes a real difference.

Useful utensils for this recipe:

The Saint-Honoré socket :

Split on one side, this sleeve gives the creams a particularly elegant and gourmet look... if you master the gesture. The texture of the cream must also be sufficiently supple and solid at the same time so that it can be prepared with a Saint-Honoré nozzle .

If we like it despite everything, it's for its versatility, because it allows decorations of different types: zigzag on round supports. It is a low-cost accessory that will forever change the design of your cakes, provided you train well in its use.

The sugar thermometer :

It is essential (or almost) to the amateur pastry chef, because it allows, among other things, to measure the cooking of the sugar at the precise temperature of 121°C, which is necessary for the realization of the essential Italian meringue .

It also allows to measure all sugar cooking temperatures during the preparation of confectionery and other caramels. The ancients used a more rustic method, which consisted in throwing a little boiling sugar into ice water, in order to gauge the texture of the cooked sugar. It was both approximate and dangerous, so we thank the inventor of the sugar thermometer.

Before buying it, be sure that the thermometer is intended for cooking sugar: its scale should range from 80 to 200°C. (the good news is that it is also very useful for frying).

Do it yourself !

You are now ready to make your first honored saint at home.

With all the tips and advice from chef Cédric Grolet, the realization of this pastry has become obvious.

Download the recipe and equip yourself with the right equipment to obtain the same result at home.

Discover our equipment and utensils for the realization of this pastry by clicking on the image below.

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