Viennoiserie trial #6: "Jay's citrusy carnival" (pandan bicolor pain Suisse ribbons, lemon, keffir lime leaves, lime-basil leaves, lemongrass, turmeric)

Well hello, bee-cheese!!! Welcome to this season's finale of my viennoiserie trials!🔥🔥

Oh my god. This was the most labor intensive viennoiserie makeup I've ever done. The lamination and make up were 5 hours process, and I rolled once every 20 minutes! hahah! Worth it!

This time I didn't take inspiration from traditional bakes or dishes. I just wanted to showcase local herbs and spice. Funny thing, if not for English translations, I will never associate lemongrass and lime-basil with lemon lol.

The dough was bicolor dough, the green one I used pandan water-extract (water sediment, to be precise). The sediment is commercially available here, so I just bought it.

The filling is cornstarch thickened lemon curd. I always think regular lemon curd is too rich to be pastry filling, it's like filling butter with more butter. Doesn't make any sense. It's basically pastry cream, but I substituted the liquid with lemon juice, the sugar with condensed milk. I used whole eggs and a bit of butter. I pureed everything (except the butter) in blender along with lemongrass, fresh turmeric root, and keffir lime leaves, strained the liquid, and cook it on wok. Wok is perfect for pastry cream, I don't even need to do egg tempering. Because wok has no edge, there is no risk of curdling, and no need for straining again.

I glazed the pastries with homemade lemon syrup, heavily infused with lime-basil leaves, or as we call it, kemangi.

Ilustration, kemangi

Verdict

I love everything about it. 'Refreshing' is a weird word to describe pastries, but these are really refreshing. The turmeric root also adds subtle orangy flavor. The syrup glaze is really fragrant. We are so obsessed over here with the outcomes. They really make perfect finale to our viennoiserie trials.

Next, I will do interesting take on babka! No commercial yeast involved! Happy baking!

Jay