Fleur de café by Ming Ai Loi

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Photos: Debic

Ming Ai Loi discovered pastry almost by accident, as he was working in a bakery while planning to direct his steps to his true passion of youth, interior design. Over the years, he immersed himself more deeply in the art of pastry making, until he realized that his work and professional environment did not allow him to grow any further. He felt the need to better understand what was going on in a recipe, the function of each ingredient, why a preparation process followed certain guidelines… Not without harboring certain doubts, he was finally encouraged to travel to Kuala Lumpur to study at the Academy of Pastry & Culinary Arts Malaysia (APCA). From there it was only a few years until he reached the highest place on the podium of the Pastry World Cup.

Together with chef Otto Tay, they opened Voilà a little over a year ago. There, as we say at so good.. magazine 30, he expresses himself freely, searching in his childhood memories and in the rich Asian culinary culture for new sources of inspiration to connect with his customers through a pastry with a solid French base.

We share Fleur de café’s recipe below. A dessert “with a special technique by shaping the sponge into a flower shape without using any mold. The filling is hazelnut cream and lemon marmalade. Then I piped a coffee chantilly on top of it to resemble the flower bud”.

Fleur de café

Coffee choux biscuit

62 g milk
62 g cooking oil
6 g coffee powder
1 g salt
76 g flour
31 g milk
78 g whole eggs
124 g egg yolks
187 g egg whites
79 g sugar

Heat the first milk, cooking oil, coffee powder and salt together in a saucepan to 70˚ºC. Add in the sifted flour and stir continuously until a dough is formed. Blend the choux dough with the second milk, whole eggs and egg yolks together. Make a medium-peaked French meringue with the sugar and egg whites. Fold the choux batter into the meringue and spread evenly onto a Flexipan (53cm x 35cm). Bake at 155˚ºC for 15 minutes.

Cocoa sablé

175 g butter (Debic Crème)
100 g icing sugar
250 g flour
25 g cocoa powder
50 g whole egg

Paddle the butter, icing sugar, flour and cocoa powder together in a mixing bowl until it reaches sandy texture, add in whole eggs and mix briefly. Leave the dough to rest in the refrigerator. Roll the dough to 2 mm thickness and cut into 11-cm-wide flower shapes. Bake at 150˚ºC for 13 minutes.

Hazelnut praliné

375 g whole hazelnuts
250 g sugar
60 g water
0,5 g vanilla bean

Cook the sugar and water together in a saucepan to 121ºC, then remove from the heat. Add in the hazelnuts and stir rapidly to coat the nuts completely in the crystallized syrup. Proceed to caramelize the crystalline sugar on a low heat. Add in the vanilla bean. Spread onto a Silpat and leave to cool before blending into a liquid paste. Preserve in the refrigerator for later use.

Hazelnut crémeux

310 g milk
41 g sugar
28 g corn starch
1 g pectin NHX (PCB)
47 g egg yolks
107 g butter (Crème Debic)
41 g hazelnut paste
25 g hazelnut praliné

Cook a crème pâtissière with the milk, sugar, corn starch, pectin and egg yolks together in a saucepan. Mix in the butter, hazelnut paste and hazelnut praliné and emulsify well. Preserve in the refrigerator for later use.

Lemon marmalade

water
lemon purée (Ponthier)
agar agar (PCB)
sugar
candied lemon zest
lemon confit (see Black and Pink for recipe)
lemon zest

Check out the recipe in so good #30

Coffee chantilly

whipping cream (Stand & Overrun)
coffee beans
invert sugar
vanilla bean
gelatin mass
whipping cream (Stand & Overrun)
mascarpone

Check out the recipe in so good #30

Cocoa glaze

328 g mirror glaze Absolu Cristal
33 g water
39 g Caraïbe 66% dark couverture

Bring the glaze and water to a boil in a saucepan. Add in the couverture and emulsify well.

Montage

On the flower crust base, pipe the lemon marmalade on the center and each flower petal. Cut the coffee choux biscuit into 11cm x 3cm strips, fold both ends together and stick it onto the flower crust. Pipe hazelnut crémeux into the middle of each coffee choux biscuit until it is 90% full. Then, pipe a thin layer of hazelnut praliné on top of the hazelnut crémeux. Using a 2.4-cm-wide round nozzle, pipe a tear drop of coffee Chantilly in the middle of the flower. Freeze the product for 30 minutes. Use a spray gun to spray a layer of hot cocoa glaze on the frozen coffee Chantilly. Arrange the chocolate garnishes around the coffee Chantilly and decorate with chopped hazelnut pieces and hazelnut peels.