In the fourth of our Bake Off ‘technical challenge’ attempts, lovefood’s Charlotte battles with choux pastry, crème pâtissière, and chocolate ganache to make eight wobbly ‘religieuse’.
The holiest of desserts
For just one ‘Religieuse’, or ‘little pastry nun’ as we like to call it, you must make two choux pastry buns, one larger than the other; fill both with crème pâtissière; give each one a chocolate ganache topping; stack them together to resemble a plump nun; and then pipe a cream collar where the two buns join. On first appearance, they look like great fun to make – and indeed some of the Great British Bake Off contestants relished the opportunity on Tuesday night’s ‘pastry’ episode. But others, especially poor old Glenn, fluffed everything from thickening their crème pat to keeping the little nuns upright.
The pressure was on for me to get it right – last week lovefood editor Andrew nailed the apricot couronne challenge, and I wanted to follow suit. Two hours was the time limit and although I’ve only ever made choux pastry twice before, I remained confident that Mary Berry’s recipe would see me through.
Biro blunder
First things first: draw circular stencils onto your greaseproof paper. I rather foolishly used blue biro for this – word of warning: pen transfers to choux pastry in the oven – but I consider that a minor mistake. The choux pastry itself worked out beautifully, and my piping (eight little nun ‘heads’, and eight little nun ‘bodies’) wasn’t half bad either. Into a very hot oven they went, and I loved watching my buns quickly treble in size – for me, choux is by far the most rewarding pastry to work with.
Next, my crème pat (pictured left). I must admit to never having made it before, but unlike Andrew I love following recipes to the letter – and as long as you do that, you can’t go wrong. It’s basically like a bog standard custard, but with the addition of flour and cornflour to thicken it, and the added stress of having to briskly whisk it over a heat. It came out well, if a little lumpy, and tasted delicious. I’ve always loved that yellow, creamy stuff that comes in a fruit tart, but never thought to make it myself until now.
Shapely choux, ghastly ganache
By this point, I was feeling jolly. I’d (sort of) mastered two skills which previously I had scant experience of, and all within 50 minutes. Happy days! But then came the seemingly simple ganache, involving chocolate and cream, which is something I’ve made many times before.
Trouble was, as soon as I added my chocolate to the just-boiled cream, it started to coagulate. In the words of Andrew, “I’ve never seen chocolate do that before”. Perhaps it was because I used cooking chocolate instead of the real deal (I misread the label in Waitrose), but there was no saving my brown bowl of lumpiness. So, with only 40 minutes left on the clock, I sprinted to the Co-op and bought some more cream, and this time normal dark chocolate. I can’t remember the last time I ran so fast.
Luckily, attempt two worked well. But by the time my ganache was finished, I had less than 30 minutes to fill all my choux buns with crème pat, dip them in chocolate, and pipe their little whipped cream collars. Panic stations! With extreme haste, I injected dollops of crème pat into each bun (which made them as heavy as small rocks), and dunked them into my bowl of still-warm ganache. Luckily it was just about cool enough to set thickly, and not dribble down the sides, and by some stroke of luck all my nun ‘heads’ sat nicely on top of their bodies, without so much as a wee wobble.
Time is ticking...
Nine minutes left to whip the cream (it went everywhere) and delicately pipe collars around my nearly-finished nuns, which were so fat by now that they looked more like snowmen. Unlike the Bake Off contestants, I didn’t have a fancy star nozzle for my collars, but it still looked pretty decent with just a normal piping bag. Amazingly, despite my Co-op dash, I finished all eight religieuse in time, although because I was stressed to the max I did forget to dip the little ‘heads’ into my ganache. Apart from that, the only other fault was the faint traces of blue biro on the bottom of each nun – but I’m hoping that Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry might not have noticed that.
On to the taste test and the verdict is... delicious! You can’t go wrong with choux pastry filled with something sweet and creamy. They were lighter than I expected, and one well-pleased colleague declared that they were “the best dessert I’ve eaten in a very long time”. So thumbs up for my religieuse, although next time I’ll swop the pen for a pencil…
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