gâteau st. honoré, or the dessert that almost defeated me

sometimes, desserts are both impressive and laughably easy to make. think tiramisu, crème brûlée, or baked alaska: guests are sure to ooh and ah over your creation as you conveniently forget to mention that it was so absurdly simple to throw together that even your pet rock could do it.

this dessert, however, isn't like that.

meet the gâteau st. honoré. it's named after the french patron saint of baking and pastry chefs (i am once again reminded of why i love that country), and an exhausting ordeal to make. one reviewer called it "an extremely complicated dessert not to be attempted by the faint-hearted."

this dessert is commonly used as a graduation test (!) for pastry chef students, since it contains basically every component that you can possibly put into a pastry: pâte feuilletée, pâte à choux, chantilly cream, pastry cream, caramel, and chiboust. if you'd like to show off, you can get even fancier and top it with spun sugar, caramel lace, meringue, chocolate tuiles, poached pears, candied rose petals, orangettes... or you could flavour the chantilly cream with matcha or strawberries, or pipe salted caramel into the cream puffs, or dip them into milk chocolate pastry cream. there really are no limits to the complexity.

the recipe reads like a novel. a russian novel. undaunted, naive little baking dilettante moi got it into my head that it would be fun to attempt this for a dinner party on christmas day. (not unlike how i thought it would be fun to take a class on tolstoy my freshman year)

oooh boy, this was a humbling experience. i've always considered myself decently competent in the kitchen, but this dessert spurred a mini-crisis -- ohmygod i can't actually cook i'm just a poser my camera has butter all over it i hope it still works i'm not qualified to be blogging!!

i was sooo close to giving up halfway through, especially after my second batch of pâte à choux once again turned into liquidy soup, the butter supply was running low, and i had been standing in the kitchen for 1 1/2 hours with little to show. i bow to you, saint honoré, i remember conceding my defeat, pouring a batch of failed batter down the garbage disposal. i, and everything else in the kitchen, was coated in flour and flecks of butter, and i felt like such a foodie failure.

not supposed to look like this. 

but miraculously... it came together. with a lot of improvisation and disregard creative adaptation of the recipe, two sinkfuls of dishes, and 3 hours of my afternoon, the gateau ended up looking pretty decent and tasting pretty phenomenal.

i christmas-ified it with raspberries and pistachios and took it to the party, where everyone was so awed that no one dared to cut into it. only after i butchered it with a steak knife did people dig in :)

recipe & more photos after the jump!

une fête de noël chinoise

being back at home means lots of "asian occasions" -- what my friends and i dub these gatherings of family friends to eat, drink, and gab :)

i will never, ever get tired of this season. or mulled wine.

happy christmas!

love,
li

say hello to my newest love

this is saundra.

i met her at a christmas party (more on that later).

she's 7 years old, and so darn cute it's unfair.

but this is eased by the fact that she told me she loves me.

the best part? her mother said i could have her. lol!