Paris-Brest a la Joe Pastry

This post from Joe Pastry filled me with the desire to emulate, I had to wait for an occasion when I needed to feed other people though. Alex from bridge had another pot-luck a couple of weeks ago and that was my big chance.

I just used almonds for the praline, not having any hazelnuts at hand, …

… cooked up the sugar and water …

… until it was a lightish caramel (I'm chicken) …

… and poured it over the nuts:

When it was cold I broke it up …

… and put it in the food processor and whizzed and whizzed and took the top off and scraped down the sides and whizzed some more, and all I got was crumbs, until I had the bright idea to add just a smidgeon of cooking oil. Finally I got a paste, although it is a lot thicker than Joe Pastry's:

On to the choux. All went swimmingly. The butter - milk - flour mix first …

…then the eggs, …

… one by one, …

… until they were all incorporated:

My piping bag is a bit small for this sort of thing, so I put the choux in a plastic bag, then chopped of one corner …

… and used that to pipe one large Paris - Brest …

… and two smaller ones, then I squeezed out the last dollop of choux to make a single profiterole:

Here they are in the oven, puffing up beautifully:

On to the pastry cream. Cream and milk on to heat …

… cornflour, sugar, …

… and egg yolks beaten together …

… hot milk/cream onto flour/sugar/egg yolks, cooked until thick, …

… then cooled down. Once cold, the praline cream mixed in. This takes a bit of work to get it even, as the pastry cream goes quite solid:

I made a slight modification to Joe's recipe. I macerated some strawberries I happened to have in icing sugar and Framboise …

… and mixed the result …

… with whipped cream instead of making Joe's Chantilly Cream. It's less sweet, and the acid of the strawberries cuts the sweetness even more:

The smaller rings wouldn't fit on one plate, so I chopped a bit out and turned them into linked rings, then started filling. First the pastry cream …

… then unsweetened whipped cream (small rings) and strawberry whipped cream (big ring) …

… and the tops:

They were very popular, and I only had to eat one portion myself. Which is good, because I'm still losing weight.