Vegan Paris-Brest no longer has to be something you can only get from an upscale bakery. If you have access to Just Egg, and enough patience, you can make this dessert fresh in your own kitchen. Paris-Brest was first created in 1891 as a celebratory dessert for a bike race between Paris and Brest in France. So because of this, the circular shape is apparently supposed to resemble a bicycle wheel. Our version is a choux pastry ring, filled with caramelized hazelnut praliné pastry cream and whipped cream. This recipe makes 2 medium-sized pastries.
Our vegan Paris-Brest recipe uses our praliné pastry cream recipe. Also if you’re curious, the whipping cream we use is Silk heavy whipping cream. We love that it essentially doesn’t have any coconut taste to it.
If you try this recipe, leave us a comment below to let us know how it goes. We would love to hear from you!
Vegan Paris-Brest
Two vegan Paris-Brest pastries filled with praliné pastry cream, whipped cream, and then topped with sliced almonds.
Equipment
- 2 or 3 piping bags
- 2 mixing bowls
- rubber spatula
- serrated knife
- small saucepan
- half sheet baking tray
- parchment paper
- pencil
- electric hand mixer with whisk attachment
Ingredients
Praliné Pastry Cream
Choux Pastry
- ¼ cup water
- ¼ cup unsweetened soy milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tbsp sugar
- 3 ½ tbsp vegan butter
- ½ cup flour
- ½ cup Just Egg (mix with the soy milk amount below)
- ¼ cup unsweetened soy milk
Whipped Cream
- 1 cup Silk heavy whipping cream
- 1 tbsp sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
Topping
- 1 handful almond slices (estimated amount)
- ¼ cup powdered sugar/ confectioner's sugar
Instructions
Make the praliné pastry cream first.
- You can prepare the pastry cream the day before if you'd like. Place it in a piping bag and leave in the fridge until needed.
Make the choux dough.
- Prepare and gather the ingredients for the choux pastry. Using the second listed amount of soy milk, mix it together with the Just Egg. Set aside for later.
- Combine the water, soy milk, vanilla extract, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan on medium heat. Mix it with a rubber spatula until the butter dissolves and then leave it for a few minutes until it starts to simmer.
- Once the liquid ingredients begin to simmer, carefully add in all the flour. Turn the heat to low. Continue to mix until the flour is incorporated and no white flour spots remain. The mix will thicken into a dough and almost form a ball. It should come off the sides of the pan easily. This shouldn’t take more than about 3 minutes.
- Scoop the dough out of the pan and into a mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Avoid using a plastic bowl as the dough will be hot. Smash the dough down and flatten it to help release the heat. Leave it to cool for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can mix the dough over some ice or some ice packs to help it cool more quickly. You can also mix the dough for a few minutes in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.
- Once your dough is just barely warm or room temperature, add in the Just Egg mixture a few tablespoons at a time. The amount is up to you. We’re just trying to avoid mixing a ball of dough sitting in egg soup—that would be more difficult to mix! Mix it with the rubber spatula and allow it to fully incorporate in between each addition. The final consistency should just barely run off the spatula and look pipe-able. Add more soy milk a tablespoon at a time if your mixture is still too thick.
- Preheat the oven to 400°F.
- Scoop the choux mixture into a piping bag with a 1/2 inch opening or smooth tip.
- TIP: If using reusable piping bags, you can close the open end of the bag by the tip with a pastry bag tie.
- Then place the piping bag into a tall glass to help you fill it more easily.
- Next, tie the back end of the bag.
Prepare the baking tray.
- Line a half sheet tray with parchment paper. On one half of the parchment paper, draw a square that is 6 inches on all sides.
- Then draw a circle inside the square. Make sure the sides of the circle touch the sides of the square.
- Fold the parchment paper in half and trace the circle onto the other half on the parchment paper. Unfold the parchment paper and flip it over so that the pencil-marked side is facing down.
- Pipe a tiny little bit of the choux dough onto each corner of the baking tray underneath the parchment paper. This will help to keep it from sliding around as you pipe the circles.
Pipe the circles.
- Keeping the tip close to the tray, squeeze continuously and pipe a strip of the mixture all along the outline of the circle. It should also be about 1 inch wide.NOTE: Pipe slowly! If you pipe too quickly, you're going to make a thin strip of dough!
- Pipe a second layer onto both circles. This vegan choux dough doesn't puff up a ton like non-vegan choux. So the second layer is to help give it some extra height. There should be enough mixture to make two double-layer circle pastries. Wet the tip of your finger and gently smooth out the seams on top.
- Place some almond slices onto the top of each circle. If you press them into the dough very slightly, that will prevent the almonds from burning too much while baking at such a high temperature.
Bake.
- Place the tray in the oven on the middle rack. Bake for 40-45 minutes until completely deep golden brown. Do not open the oven at all until the last few minutes of baking. The pastry needs consistent heat for the moisture to turn to steam and cause them to rise.This is what they looked like about half-way through baking. (There's that extra ball of choux again.)
- After 45 minutes, turn off the oven and leave the door open a bit. Leave the pastries in there for 10 minutes. Make the whipped cream while they are cooling.
Make the whipped cream.
- Pour the whipping cream, sugar, and vanilla extract into a mixing bowl.
- Whisk with an electric hand mixer until stiff peaks form (about 3 minutes). Place it into a pipng bag and put it into the fridge to keep it cool until you need it.
Assemble the pastries.
- After ten minutes, remove the pastries from the oven. They will still be warm. Using a serrated knife, cut them in half horizontally, so that they can be filled.
- Scoop out the bit of wet dough on the bottom with a small spoon.
- Pipe a layer of the praliné pastry cream into the bottom half of each circle. Not the top halves. We used a star-tipped nozzle, but you can make it look however you want.
- Pipe a second layer of the pastry cream. Make sure that pastry cream is cold. Ours was not cold enough and started looking runny.
- Pipe a layer of the whipped cream on top of the praliné pastry cream. We used a star-tipped nozzle again.
- Carefully place the top halves onto each circle.
- Sprinkle some powdered sugar over the tops using a small sieve.
- Best eaten fresh 🙂
You have called this vegan and yet it contains eggs. Do you have an eggless recipe?
This recipe is eggless and vegan. Just Egg is a plant-based egg replacer in the United States. https://www.ju.st/products/just-egg
How long does this last in the fridge?
Disaster! The pastry came out soft and hollow moist inside that when I cut it with a serrated knife. My piping bag for praliné creme have a hole so wasn’t able to pipe everything on the pastry. Everything was almost perfect but the piping of the choux flour! Maybe because I piped 4 layers of choux on top of each other because I forgot to put in the almonds at the first pipe. Taste- wise , I can taste and smell the JustEgg on the whipped cream. The praliné creme was delicious. It was good experience to make this but not sure if I will reattempt this again.
Didn’t work , second attempt at choux pastry. The pastry came out too thin and brittle that it is impossible to cut the pastry in half with a serrated knife.