Golden choux buns with a crisp pistachio craquelin crown, filled with a silky pistachio crème mousseline, vanilla-whipped cream, honey-macerated cherries and crunchy pisatchios.
Anything choux bun or eclair adjacent always reminds me of the trip to Paris my sister and I took a few years ago; she bought me the plane ticket for Christmas and we went in the spring. The trip came at a time when both my sister and I were at a kind of limbo in life–both in situations that we hadn’t expected to be in, and embracing a feeling of new-found freedom that felt confusing and exciting, and made the trip feel very liberating and quite dream-like. We spent our days wandering the city without a care in the world, smoking skinny little cigarettes and dropping into bakeries that I’d noted down to visit, eating pastries before they melted in the intense heat, making friends with eccentric Parisiens at wine bars and eating late night dinners in restaurants across town before wandering home wine-drunk and giggling. It’s a trip that beholds memories and a feeling that makes me smile to myself whenever I think back to it; it feels like another lifetime now.
Notes: make ahead elements for this recipe are the crème pâtissière for the crème mousseline and the pistachio craquelin–both can be made up to 2 days in advance, stored in the fridge. You can also make the choux pastry a day ahead of baking and storing it in the fridge, but it’s important to remove it from the fridge about an hour before piping to let it soften. For the crème mousseline, once the butter and pistachio cream are added to the set crème pâtissière it will need to set in the fridge for at least 3 hours, so be sure to factor that is when making this recipe.
As with all filled choux, these are best enjoyed the day of baking and assembling. After that, the texture of the choux will suffer, most notably the craquelin will become very soft. Should you have any leftovers, though, stored them in a sealed container in the fridge, then let sit at room temperature for 30-60 minutes to allow the crème mousseline to soften.
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