Earl grey lavender Paris-Brest

Instructions

• Make the pastry cream
• Add the milk, salt, tea bags, and lavender buds to a medium-sized saucepan. Heat over medium-low heat, stirring occasionally, until the mixture just comes to a simmer. Turn off the heat, cover, and let steep for 10 minutes. Strain out the lavender buds and tea bags using a fine mesh sieve and return the tea-infused mixture to the saucepan. If one of your tea bags breaks open, it’s completely fine since the tea is very fine–this will just create a speckled effect, which I tend to prefer.
• In a large bowl, whisk together the sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks, mixing vigorously until the mixture turns pale and develops a lighter texture. This will take 2-3 minutes and you’ll find that it gets thinner and easier to mix as you go. Whisking constantly, very slowly stream approximately half of the tea-infused milk into the eggs yolks. Then, pour this mixture back into the saucepan with the remaining milk, continuing to whisk constantly.
• Return the saucepan to the stove and cook over medium heat, continuing to whisk constantly, until the mixture is no longer foamy and the pastry cream has thickened enough to hold the marks of the whisk. If you’re not sure, you can pause whisking for just a few seconds and you should see large bubbles form beneath the surface and pop, which should indicate that the pastry cream is ready.
• If there are any lumps in your pastry cream, strain it. Otherwise, you can skip this and pour into a bowl. Whisk in the cold butter, one tablespoon at a time, until it has melted into the pastry cream. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap, pressing the plastic wrap down to directly touch the pastry cream (this will prevent a skin from forming on top). Refrigerate until cold, at least 4-5 hours.
• Make the choux pastry
• In a saucepan, combine the milk, sugar, salt, butter, lemon zest and 1/2 a cup of water. Stir to dissolve the butter and bring to a simmer. When the mixture is bubbling, quickly add in all of the flour and then gradually stir with a spoon to incorporate it. Once specks of white flour are no longer visible, begin to stir vigorously until the ingredients come together into a soft dough.
• Use the back of a spoon to smack the dough against the sides of the pan, cooking over medium heat until the dough is smooth and the film on the bottom of the pan has reabsorbed into the dough. This should take about three minutes and the idea is to give the mixture enough time for some liquid to evaporate out and for the flour to no longer taste raw.
• Using your spoon or spatula, add the dough to a mixing bowl. Let cool for about one minute and then turn the mixer on medium speed. You can do this by hand or with a stand mixer with a paddle attachment. Add four of the eggs, one at a time, beating well or stirring vigorously after each addition to fully incorporate it into the dough. Keep going until the mixture is glossy and smooth and if you lift up the paddle or a spoon with the dough on it, it will fall off in a V-shape. Stop after four eggs to check for the V-shape and if you don’t see it yet, add in the last egg. There is a good chance you will need to use the full five eggs, which is what I did, but it’s good to check at four just in case your eggs are larger and you have already achieved the right consistency.
• Transfer to a pastry bag or a gallon-size ziploc bag if you don’t have a formal pastry bag. Preheat the oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment and trace a 9″ circle (you can try to find a pan with the correct diameter to trace). Flip the parchment over so the side with the pen marks is on the bottom. Then, snip a 1-inch opening in the bag with the choux pastry and pipe a circle directly inside the traced line, with a little overlap at the point where you start and end the circle. Consider the traced line to be the outer border of your piped circle.
• Then, choosing a different staring point, pipe another circle inside the first, so that it sits flush against the first circle. Choosing another new starting point different from the first two, pipe a circle on top, nestled in between the first two.
• Crack an egg into a small bowl and beat with a fork. Brush the egg all around the choux pastry ring. Then lightly drag a fork around, inside, and on top of the dough to create score marks. Be sure to run your fork across the various areas where the rings of pastry meet to help blend the rings together. Mix together the contents of one earl grey tea bag with one tablespoon of sugar. Sprinkle generously over the top and add the optional sliced almonds.
• Bake for 10 minutes. Then reduce the oven to 350F and bake for an additional 45 to 55 minutes, or until the pastry has puffed and is a deep golden brown. You need the pastry to dry out so it doesn’t collapse so make sure the pastry is a deep golden color and not lightly browned. Turn the oven off Remove the baking sheet from the oven, poke several holes around the pastry using a paring knife to release the steam and return to the oven (turned off) with the door propped open for about 10 minutes. Then remove from the oven and let cool completely.
• Assemble
• Whip the cream with a mixer or whisk until it’s light and fluffy and you see soft peaks.
• Take your cooled choux pastry and, holding a serrated knife parallel to the work surface, insert it into the pastry and slide it through so it pokes out the other end. Keeping the knife flat, gently saw, cutting horizontally all the way around the circle so that you have a bottom and a top ring. Temporarily remove the top ring and using a spoon, scoop out some of the dough inside the bottom ring.
• Fill a piping bag or ziploc bag with the earl grey lavender pastry cream and cut a 1/2-inch opening. Pipe little dollops inside the base, filling the entire base and using up all of the pastry cream. Then repeat the same process with the whipped cream, this time piping larger dollops on top of the pastry cream using a 1-inch opening.
• Take the top ring and slice into eight equal-sized parts. Arrange those on top of the Paris-Brest, in their original location on the ring. This is to allow you to cut slices of the the Paris-Brest without smooshing the whole thing and causing the filling to ooze out. Serve as soon as possible after assembling for the best experience.