Making Chiboust

Call it chi-BOOST, call it she-BOO, it’s a sweet, light and delicate filling either way. Pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue is what it is, and it works well in just about any context where you want a large volume of filling, but don’t want to overwhelm the eater with richness or heaviness. A Paris-Brest is a good example, or a Gâteau St. Honoré. Bear in mind that chiboust — like most meringues — doesn’t like humidity. And while it can be piped, pipe it only through large-bore nozzles, since constriction and pressure causes it to deflate and go runny, depending on how light it is. A standard chiboust is 2-1 meringue to pastry cream, but this one is 3-1.

Here I have about a cup of the firmer of the two pastry creams that are up on the site.

To that I’ll add a roughly equal amount of Italian meringue…

…and fold it in. Then another equal quantity of meringue…

…and finally another until I’ve got something that looks about like this.

And ze she-boo, she iz done!