The Grand Budapest Hotel: Mendl's Pastry

This post will be a bit different comparing to my other posts with recipes and tutorials. First of all Mendl's dessert from 'The Grand Budapest Hotel' are made from choux pastry and I had never-ever try to make that kind of pastry by myself. Second of all this post will be helpful (I hope so:)for those like me, for beginners, who have no idea how to work with that mysterious kind of pastry. And finally the third - this post is different, because basically, I'm not writing a tutorial (everything is perfectly explained in the video below), and only going to leave some tips under photos. 

So, here's what we need:

For the Pastry 

250 g plain flour (1 cup)

250 ml fresh water (1 cup)

~60 g butter 

a pinch of salt

a pinch of sugar (not necessary)

For the Filling

Several pieces of semi-sweet chocolate

3 egg yolks

100 g sugar

2-3 spoons cacao powder

300 g milk

1 tbsp flour

Cornstarch

Alternative Filling:

3 egg yolks

Strongly made espresso (for the coffee cream)

100-150 g sugar

300 milk

2 tbsp flour

Cornstarch for thicken

Hard?

A bit challenging for beginners, but definitely worth to try

And now, a beautiful video from one German baker. It's completely beautiful and it's totally ok to watch it millions of times. Pure magic!

And here are my photos from the process:)

Tip 1: in the video, we can see like the baker mixes eggs with a sifted flour, but I really recommend to add eggs one by one. Only, in this case, one can control how thick the pastry is.
Because if pastry's too soft - flour or cornstarch will help to make it thicker, but it might not grow in the oven at all.

Tip 2: temperature matters. My first courtesans were not very grown. So pay attention to the temperature, otherwise, you'll have cookies:)
Besides, watching little courtesans growing in the oven is a real magic!

Tip 3: buy a really good quality food color. Why? Because of aesthetic matters:))

Closer view on my very first Mendl's pastry:)