The puff-pastry-dessert Paris-Brest honors a bike race from 1891, the Paris-Brest-Paris. It is even in the shape of a bike wheel; perfect for your Tour de France party.
Paris-Brest
It’s that time of year again, when the biking fanatics (they call themselves cyclists because “cyclist” sounds more European and less rabid) turn on Versus and watch the Tour de France. They watch hours and hours of guys on bicycles sweating in the mountains; the mountain views are very pretty. The guys are biking in places you’d like to visit, like the French Alps and the south of France, by the glistening blue Mediterranean Sea, but what’s a non-biker to do?
Throw a Tour de France party! Use it as an excuse to make a Paris-Brest. You might be startled. Pardonnez-moi? A what? A French breast? That sounds kinky. But you would be wrong.
Brest (pronounced “BHrest”) is a town in France and the Paris-Brest is a pastry created in 1891 to honor the Paris-Brest-Paris bicycle race, which was a precursor of—drumroll, please—the Tour de France. It all comes full circle, does it not?
The Paris-Brest is, in fact, in the shape of a circle. The pastry chef thought: bike wheel. And then he thought: Zut alors! I will make a pastry in the shape of a bike wheel, a puff pastry ring, filled with praline pastry cream and topped with toasted almonds and powdered sugar.
Puff Pastry
Those words don’t convey the wonder of his creation. The Paris-Brest is a show-stopper. Even your guys-watching-guys-biking-through-mountains will look up from the TV to have a slice. You’ll find out for sure when you make it. And, don’t worry about making it it’s not hard. The Paris-Brest recipe at Epicurious uses hazelnuts instead of the traditional praline of almonds, but you’ll be okay. There’s much to love about hazelnuts.
First you make an airy puff pastry, with eggs and flour and butter just like the dough for éclairs and cream puffs and pipe it with a pastry bag into a nice, big circle: perhaps the only bicycle wheel you’ll ever care about.
Then, while that’s cooling, it’s on to the praline pastry cream. You could, if you so desire, skip the pastry cream and go straight for whipped cream spiked with a little Amaretto. That would be even easier, although not traditional. But whose to say? Paris-Brest in American is an uncommon dessert and nobody will know but you.
To serve: slice the pastry wheel in half, as if cutting cake into layers, fill the bottom half with the pastry cream (or whipped cream; wink, wink), top with the second layer, then top the whole thing with almonds and powdered sugar. Voila! Vive La Tour de France!
