Conversations and Paris brest

So today we made conversations and Paris brests, which are two traditional French pastries. The former is made with puff pastry and the latter with choux pastry. I don't know where/how the conversation got its name, perhaps the pastry struck up some lively banter when it was first made? The Paris brest (not breast) is supposed to resemble a wheel, more specifically bike wheel, as there is a yearly cycling race in the town of Brest.




So for the conversations, we rolled out puff pastry dough and lined a tart ring. The dough was then filled with almond cream and then topped with another layer off puff pastry. I'm not sure if its for taste or decoration, but we spread royal icing on top and garnished with a lattice pattern.



It came out of the oven looking fine, but I'm kinda sick of almond cream.



And here's a quick rundown of the Paris brest. We made some more choux pastry and piped it out and covered the dough with sliced almonds. We also piped another ring to fit into the middle of the Paris brest as support for the pastry cream.



We made the filling, which is a mixture of pastry cream, butter, and praline made out of hazelnuts.



When the choux pastry was done baking, we sliced them in half, filled the large Paris brest with the extra ring of choux pastry, and piped on the cream filling.





We also made some mini Paris brests that we got to take home, since the larger ones were used for restaurant service!