Paris-Brest
A ring of choux split and filled with praline mousseline, made for a bicycle race and shaped like a wheel. The praline is the whole dish.
Photograph credit: Paris-Brest IMG 0875 by Deror_avi · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · this resized copy is shared under the same licence
Make Ahead and Storage
Assembled, 24 hours refrigerated. The unfilled ring keeps 2 days and freezes for a month.
Paris-Brest: The Method
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For the praline, roast the hazelnuts at 180°C / 355°F for 10 minutes and rub off the skins. Melt the sugar to a dark caramel, pour it over the nuts on an oiled tray, cool, then blitz to a smooth paste.
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Make a pastry cream: heat the milk, whisk the yolks with the sugar and cornflour, combine and cook until very thick. Cover and cool to room temperature.
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For the choux, boil the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt, tip in the flour, beat to a ball and dry it over the heat 2 minutes. Cool 5 minutes, then beat in the eggs.
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Pipe a 22 cm ring onto a lined tray, pipe a second ring outside it touching, and a third on top of the join. Brush with egg and scatter with almonds.
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Bake at 200°C / 400°F for 20 minutes, then 170°C / 340°F for 20 minutes more, until very dark and dry. Cool completely.
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Beat the room-temperature butter until pale, then beat in the cooled pastry cream a spoonful at a time, followed by the praline paste.
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Split the ring horizontally, pipe the mousseline generously into the base, replace the lid and dust with icing sugar.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Pan and tin size.
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A Few Pointers
- Butter and pastry cream both at room temperature or the mousseline splits.
- Bake the choux dark and dry. Pale rings collapse.
- If it splits, warm a third of it and beat it back in.
Some Background
Mousseline is pastry cream beaten with butter, and it splits if the two are at different temperatures — both must be at exactly room temperature before they meet, and if it does curdle, warming a third of the mixture gently and beating it back in will bring it round. The choux ring is baked until genuinely dry and dark; a pale ring collapses under the weight of the filling within minutes of being cut.
What to Put Next to It
Coffee · Nothing · A small glass of Armagnac
Quick Answers
How long does Paris-Brest take to make?
50 minutes of preparation and 40 minutes of cooking, so at least 1 hour 30 minutes. The method also needs time for cooling the pastry cream and the choux ring, which it does not time, so treat that as a minimum. The recipe serves 8.
Paris-Brest Nutrition
Per serving, calculated from the ingredient list with USDA FoodData Central figures (SR Legacy). A calculation, not a laboratory analysis: brands, cuts and how you measure change the real numbers. How the figures are worked out.
Your notes on this recipe
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Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
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