Gateau St Honoré

[idun]

I made my very first gateau st honoré today.

My hands are burnt to hell getting the toffee on the choux buns. And I had real trouble with the toffee. It isn't as if I don't make various toffee's regularly, I just used a new heavy bottomed pan and the toffee continued getting darker and cooking well away from the heat.

In my haste to get the choux buns coated, even using tongues, I really hurt myself.

Any suggestions to stop the toffee burning and apparently getting hotter and hotter, even when away from the heat.

The St Honoré was lovely incidentally, but before I make it again, I need some astuce or other so that I don't get burnt.

[pachapapa]

No idea what a gateau st honoré is but sounds as if you are caramelising sugar to make a toffee topping.

I would use a chalumeau de cuisine; well in fact I wouldn't I would use a small butane gas chalumeau heating and soldering kit.

In france there are lots of moderately priced specifically designed kitchen tools.

http://chalumeaudecuisine.com/

[idun]

I've got one of them, absolutely no good in these circumstances at all.

http://www.cuisinomania.com/recette-Saint-Honor%C3%A9.349.html 

Like this, only mine was prettier.

[NormanH]

There is a tip here about getting the caramel on

http://www.joepastry.com/2011/making-gateau-st-honore/

[idun]

Thanks NH, that explains it. The toffee continued to cook and cook and cook and I'm too slow of an old bird to get them dipped in quickly enough......... in fact, it seems, I am cack handed these days.

I don't know what I'll do next time. If there is a next time.

This was one of my treats in France. And I put a layer of creme patissiere under the chantilly, because that is how I had it from my bakers in France and I like it like that and I don't care what other recipes say.

ps, I wouldn't put them down upside town and leave the tops like toffee apples, that looks very strange to me and unattractive, although as we are all different, maybe others will think it looks very nice.

 

[pachapapa]

Malcolm thinks [I], why not keep the "gunge" in a "bain-marie" at just above melting temperature, put your little round things on a silicon oven sheet, then with a silicone basting brush apply the gunge to the top of the little round things. If the little round things are cooled in the deep freeze compartment of a fridge then solidification of the gunge will be quicker; or as an alternative a quick whiff of liquid nitrogen as the gunge hits the little round things.

[Chancer]

When I was young back in the late 70's and living in my first bed sit it became apparent that i would need to learn to cook in order to survive, my mother had died some years earlier without passing on these skills to me, in the time that I remained with my father I was either starved or fed Sainsburys individual S&K pie and baked beans [:'(]

Forever the optimist I signed up for an evening class called cordon bleue cookery without knowing even the basics, to make matters worse I was skipping fluid mechanics evening class at thye tech in order to do it and my tutor turned out to be the husband of the lady doing the cookery lessons.

Gateau St Honoré was one of the recipes and I have not heard the name since although I can remember it and almost taste it after all these years, I still have my hand written notes and they are here with me in France, I am going to look later to see if she gave us any tips!

Editted; without looking I am sure the toffe would have been softened in a pyrex bowl standing in a pan of simmering water (bain marie I suppose) I reckon we would have put it on the choux using a piping funnel made out of a folded triangle of greaseproof paper with the sharp end cut off.

This is how I would attack the job now and I learnt all my basic cooking skills from that course, i will check later to see if I am correct in my assumption.

[pachapapa]

I think on this one the fluid mechanics would be useful, coupled with the thermodynamics and latent heat of liquid toffee.[:-))]

[Chancer]

I have always had the ability to attend the minimum of lessons and just cram revision on the coursework and still get distinctions at the exams, the problem was I had to have a good attendance record or a dispensation from the course tutor to sit the exams.

For years I had been missing classes and duping the tutors with my hard luck stories which were for the most part true, I was S.D.F. for quite long periods and when I did finally have a safe roof above my head needed to work most evenings and weekends repairing cars to pay the rent, every other year was continous assessment  I would be "referred" to the next year on the basis of my prior exam results alone as I submitted little or no coursework, homework or project work.

I thought that i had it cracked until my tutor was relating the story of his phantom student to his wife [:(], to his credit he allowed me to sit the exam as his wife had told him that I had been very vigourous in my practical experimentation of bodily fluid mechanics with several of the women in the class, all of them significantly older than I.

I did cookery classes for a while in France but they were quite expensive and not as rewarding as the ones of my youth [6]

[Chancer]

I have just found my notes, they have some great howlers like "shoe pastry" and "Patty sucre" or maybe its "Petty sucre" I cant really read my writing described in one school report as execrable.

The following are my notes verbatim on the toffee and assemblage, i sort of had my own shorthand, they were never intended to be read by others.

Put all toffee ingedients into pan put on heat make sure sugar melts before water boils do not stir after sugar melts cook until - drop into water (meaning I think, - one drop into cold water) & it goes hard - cracked state dont burn fingers! take 1 shoe bun [:$] - dip into toffee repeat, build wall around base (that will be a sort of turret on the Patty sucre ellipse!)

trail toffee over wall - seals holes let cool, layer cream on bottom layer rasberrys last layer fruit, pipe twirls of cream over top

What makes me cringe reading it now is the lack of punctuation, there were no full stops, no capitals and only the two commas that I have repeated, clearly I had never heard of brackets and was using hyphens instead!!!

The toffee ingredients were:

1/2 pound brown demerera sugar

2+1/2 oz water

1/2 tbsp golden syrup

1 oz butter

1/2 tsp vinegar [:-))]

[idun]

Yes Chancer, your last recipe was the one I am working from with regards to dipping the buns into the toffee, I even watched Michel Roux on Youtube deftly dipping them in the freshly cooked toffee.

Keeping toffee hot, well it is a tricky thing to work with is toffee. I'll give it a try in a bain mairie once it is cooked, but I think it will harden in the hot bowl, I don't think the bowl will get hot enough for it as the toffee should be somthing like 140°c at least.

Interesting cooking lessons Chancer.

 

 

[Tancrède]

[quote user="idun"]The toffee continued to cook and cook and cook…[/quote]

I often need to make caramel  -  but not, I must admit, for anything as sensational as your gâteau St Honoré.  I don't use a heavy pan for this precisely to avoid the problem of it overcooking.

In order to stop caramel (or toffee, or butterscotch) cooking further I either dip the base of the pan briefly into water, or pour a small amount of water into it.

The former is quite a violent way of treating the pan  -  which is why a use a beaten-up, pre-war article inherited from the great aunts.  Adding water can be a little explosive, but is useful if you need the caramel to be slightly slacker.

In either case, if the caramel/toffee hardens, the pan can be put back on the heat for a moment or two.

But as for using a bain marie, I really cannot see how this would be helpful given that the setting point of the material is, as you say, so much higher than the boiling point of water.

 

[pachapapa]

140°C wow....back to the blow torch then....how about sticks of toffee used like solder?

[idun]

I wasn't saying wow when this hot toffee was sticking to my hands. In fact I think I used my full expletive vocabulary. Even when I had finished with the toffee what five minutes later, when I put some water in it it went mad, made a terrible noise.

Thanks for that about cooling the pan slightly, I'll try with an old pan next time and maybe put some hot water in a bowl and just take that savage heat from the pan.

The toffee without heat went from golden to dark molasses in but a few seconds.

 

This has now caused a domestic argument as 'he' says that it is too dangerous for me to be messing around with...... and he may be right. I certainly couldn't do what I did yesterday, far too painful.

[ViVienne]

last time I made caramel I forgot that just because it looks cool enough to touch it isn't, I could probably rob a bank now and leave no fingerprints!

[idun]

I bet that hurt. Fingerprints, apparently do grow back, don't know how long it takes though.

[pachapapa]

Sounds dangerous! Probably an exothermic change from dextrorotary to levorotary....could damage a frying pan.[:P]

[idun]

[:D]And I always think of it as the 'art' of cooking and now you've made it sound all scientific[:-))]