Recipe Crispy Raspberry and Lemon Myrtle Religieuse
Religieuse is a French pastry made of two choux pastry profiteroles, one larger than the other. In my version of religieuse, I am using a pastry called craquelin on top of piped choux pastry before baking them. Craquelin makes the choux puff very crispy. Then I am filling them with two different flavors raspberry cream and lemon myrtle cream and decorating with white chocolate rings dusted with freeze dried raspberry and lemon myrtle powder.
Classical religieuse has got custard/pastry cream filling in baked choux pastry and coated with fondant or nappage of the same flavors as the filling.The name religieuse means Nun in french. This recipe was part of my six afternoon tea pastry selections when I competed in Oceanafest 2015 competition organised by The Australian Culinary Federation. in which I managed to win 2 bronze medals. The recipe is as follows:
150 g Cake flour Colouring as required
Boil milk, butter, sugar and salt and scraped vanilla bean together
Add flour and cook on heat till the mixture is cooked. The mixture which is now called panada, should come clean from the sides of the pot and should form a thin layer at the bottom of the pot. It is very crucial to cook this mixture well.
Put the mix in a mixing bowl with paddle attachment and cool it down to about 55*C. Gradually add eggs till well combined. The mix should be glossy and form a peak when dropped.
For Craquelin, cream butter and sugar and add flour till just combined and add red color to half of the mix and green to other part. Roll out between two sheets of baking paper to about 3 mm thickness and store in cool room.
Fill the mix in a piping bag and pipe two different sizes for base and the top of the religieuse. For any accurate size, pipe in 2.5 cm and 4 cm diameter sizes keeping the size and volume consistent.
Cut 4 cm disk for red craquelin and 2.5 cm diameter for green craquelin and place on bigger and smaller size piped choux pastry
Bake at 170*c for 15 mins and lower the temperature to 160*c and bake for another 20-30 mins till the choux puffs are dry and crispy. Then shut off the oven and let them dry out completely.
Cool at room temperature.
Beat egg yolks, sugar and corn flour till light
Boil cream and milk and add to egg yolk mixture
Boil the puree and add to above mixture.
Bring the mix back to heat and cook till 78*c.
Strain the mix and deposit over a flat tray lined with cling wrap
Boil milk, vanilla and lemon myrtle powder.
Add flour and cornflour to the egg yolk mix and temper the mix with hot milk mixture
Put the ingredients back to the pot and cook the mix till 78*c
Cool and fold softened butter
Don’t over mix it or it will split
Pipe raspberry pastry cream in red profiterole and lemon myrtle cream in green profiterole
Place some raspberry cream on top on red profiterole and place a small disk of white chocolate and pipe some lemon myrtle cream and place green profiterole on top.
Hope the recipe is easy to follow. It can be done without using lemon myrtle powder as well because it is hard to source. It can be replaced with herbs like mint or basil as well.
Happy baking and have fun.
