...Yet another puff pastry dessert!

I was finally down to one rectangular sheet of baked puff pastry. By this time, we were getting a bit tired of the millefeuille (spoiled, aren't we??), so I made something I've always wanted to make...A Saint-Honore'!

Named after a saint, Saint-Honore is a classic pastry that has a puff pastry base, with Creme Chiboust (a vanilla pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue), Creme Chantilly (a.k.a. sweetened whipped cream), and adorned with miniature choux creme (a.k.a. cream puffs).

The actual saint, St. Honore, is a patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. Legend goes, that his nursemaid refused to believe that he had been proclaimed bishop, claiming that she will believe only if the baker's peel (a huge oar-like spatula used to remove breads from the oven) she's using put down roots and turns into a tree. Upon being placed on the ground, the peel turned into a blackberry tree.

Legends aside, how does the actual pastry taste? I used the leftover pastry cream to make the Creme Chiboust, baked off a few choux creme shells (there's a side story to this, btw), and assembled the whole thing. The miniature choux are traditionally dipped in caramel.

Turned out pretty good! It was a wonderful combination of textural contrasts: The flaky crisp puff pastry, contrasted by the creamy Creme Chiboust, the more lighter and silkier whipped cream, the crunchy caramel on choux creme... I've never eaten the real thing, so I don't know how close I got. But both my parents thought it tasted delicious. Yet another proof that a dessert that lasted for a few millenia is guaranteed to taste good.