Floreale dessert with pollen, honey, and lemon by Alexandre Thabard

What worries Alexandre Thabard, pastry chef at the Emirates Palace Mandarin Oriental Abu Dhabi, the most is sugar content. As he himself explains “I love pastry but not when it is too sweet. I want to directly create my recipe and compare it to previous pastries. I don’t use fake food coloring so all the pastries in the pastry shop are all natural.” For this reason, “we make our own praline, our marmalade is also very natural, and we have about 1,000 bees, so we make our own honey.”

And, precisely with this flower honey, combined with lemon and pollen, he presents the light dessert Floreale, whose recipe we share below. “With a crunch, an ice cream, a marmalade, a siphon, the whole creates a textured dessert,” he adds.

Floreale

Sablé pollen

48 g pollen
227 g almond powder
272 g butter
181 g demerara
272 g flour T55

Mix together at 150ºC.

Honey espuma

536 g cream
80 g honey
134 g milk

Mix together and add in the siphon.

Biscuit honey

190 g butter clarified
277 g egg yolk
110 g eggs
336 g honey
218 g sugar
43 g almond powder
221 g sour cream
44 g cream
444 g flour
6 g salt
10 g baking powder

Whip the egg yolk, eggs, sugar and honey. Add the cream, sour cream, butter at 45ºC and the powder. 1.800 g for 40×60 cm. Cook for 18 minutes at 170ºC.

Agar lemon gel

853 g lemon puree
119 g sugar
26 g agar
3 g pectin NH

Heat the lemon puree at 40ºC. Add the pectin, sugar, agar and boil. Mix strain.

Ice cream lemon Pacojet

375 g milk
113 g lemon puree
98 g sugar
56 g butter
45 g glucose powder
38 g milk powder
23 g lemon zest
3 g stabilizer

Heat the milk with the butter. At 40ºC, add the sugar and glucose powder, milk powder and stabilizer. Heat at 83ºC. Cold and add the lemon puree and zest. Pour into the Pacojet.

Assembly

Place the honey sponge 8 cm round 30 g (2 kg one tray 60×40 cm) covered with a thin layer of lemon gel 8 g (500 g for 1 tray 60×40 cm) and pollen sablé on the plate (15 g / pcs), add a scoop of ice cream (30 g) and then with the siphon, add the honey espuma (~35 g). Finish with pollen (2 g), kress and lemon gel on top. When ready to serve, add in front of the guest a spoon of honey on top to sweeten the dessert (5/10 g).