Bignè Con Crema Pasticcera

Thanks to bignè, I changed my view about sweets filled with cream.

In my childhood, I disliked anything that was infused with cream, especially the rich tarts that our relatives and friends of my parents served us with an afternoon coffee on Sundays when we stopped for short visits on the way to our town from my Grandparents house in the countryside.  Everyone else always seemed to be keen on such deserts and so I usually became the centre of unwanted  attention when my piece of cake on the plate remained untouched.  And still now, I can feel the disapproving eyes of the adults fixed on me after every little crumb was swept away on their plates still long before the black coffee powder on the surface of their cups with cheap Turkish coffee managed to sink down to the bottom.

It was the 7Os and 80s behind the iron curtain in communist Czechoslovakia when you could buy only one kind of bad coffee in a shop and instead of fresh, wholesome ingredients people often were using all kinds of alternatives. There was a popular ingredient for baking called Hera after the Greek Goddess that was made out of butter-substituting plant oils and made the creams particularly dense and heavy.

For a long time seeing a cream glancing at me from the inside of cakes, tarts or any sweets in general made my stomach  feel uneasy and the mood of such visits returned to me. I could smell the gasoline of the old Skoda car that we arrived with and the strange scents of other people’s homes so typical for those days, with one piece cabinet set covering the entire long walls in the living rooms that had a couple of glass vitrines displaying some precious porcelain or Czech crystal pieces, handmade crocheted fabrics decorating the dining tables and wall to wall carpets on the floors.

But because of bigne I saw a new light.

I tasted these little sweet balls in Rome for the first time after we moved there for several years. They are in every coffee or pastry shop in many variations: with crema pasticerra, coffee cream, pistachio, zabaione cream and powdered with sugar or decorated with chocolate, sugar or coffee syrup.  We usually bought a bundle of 6 or 12 bigne and they were handed to us on nice gold-paper plates, wrapped in white paper. They were gone almost as soon as we undid the wrap.

Our favourite place to buy them was a pasticerria on via Vitellia on the way to basilica San Pancrazio, the stunningly beautiful church from the 6th century which was our second home, a place where we spent most of our afternoons. In Italy churches with their oratorio (the areas that surround them) are the centres of happening and they provide, besides the usual masses and services, after school activities for children.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays our older son Kryštof had football with Stefano, the unforgettable, bighearted coach who dedicated all his free time to the neighbourhood kids. On Mondays there was la prima communione (the first communion) preparation and on Wednesdays the chierichettos (altar boys) meeting with padre Jarek, young Polish priest who was beloved by the children. On Fridays we were missing the place so much that we came anyway and the kids would just play outside together with other children from the neighbourhood, being surrounded by the faded brownish-crepe walls of the ancient basilica and refreshed by cooling breeze from the adjoining Villa Pamphili, the biggest park in Rome. I loved the loudness and scream of the children and all the friendly voices and faces around, the rustling of brown Carmelitan priests’ robes who were rushing from the church to the backyards and back, the ancient smell of the basilica and the unique view of villa Pamphili, with its magnificent pine trees towering on the horizon.

The pasticceria on the way was an Italian-Jewish place and in our opinion the kosher bignè were the best in our hood. You could sit inside or outside on the sidewalk at a simple table and observe the passers-by and listen to the buzzing life around. But we mostly just took a bundle away on the way home in the late afternoons or on Sundays morning when we felt we were entitled to a special treat. The service was more of a Central European fit which meant they rarely smiled at us behind the counters and were impatient if we didn’t choose quick enough. But the bigne were too good to miss.

When I started my pasticceria course in Rome, the sweets I wanted to learn the most were bignè. It wasn’t quite easy at the end, perhaps because my Italian wasn’t very good back then and I missed some important information you have to know. That the oven has to be heated well before you bake them so the dough puffs up and that you have to mix the dough on the stove long enough until a crust develops on the bottom of the pot. But I learned the process well eventually and any time I make them at home we have a special time as our thoughts and hearts wander back to the splendid San Pancrazio.

 

 

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Ingredients

For bigne:

• 125 g all purpose flour
• 250 g water
• 125 g soft butter
• pinch of salt
• 1tsp brown sugar
• 4 eggs

For crema pasticcera:

1. 500 g milk
2. 150 g brown sugar
3. 4 egg yolks
4. 40 g all purpose flour
5. 1 tsp vanilla seeds or powder
6. pinch of salt

To finish:

• powdered sugar or melted chocolate

 

Method

Make crema pasticcera:

1. In a bowl, whisk half of the sugar with egg yolks. Then whisk in the flour with a pinch of salt.
2. Start boiling the milk with the other half of the sugar and vanilla in a pot with a thick bottom.
3. When it’s about to start boiling, take it from the stove. Add one scoop of the milk/sugar liquid to the egg yolks/sugar/flour mixture. Whisk quickly and repeat 2 more times.
4. Now scrape the yolks/sugar/flour mixture to the pot with milk, return it to the stove on medium heat and mix it rapidly with a wooden spoon.
5. When the cream thickens, take it off the heat but keep mixing it until the cream becomes smooth.
6. Transfer the cream to a bowl, leave it to cool, then cover it with plastic and put it in the fridge.

Make bigne:

1. In a pot with a thick bottom, add butter in cubes into water. Add the salt and sugar as well.
2. Warm it up on the stove until the butter dissolves.
3. Take it off the heat and add the flour. Mix it well.
4. Return the pot to the stove and keep mixing the batter on medium heat with a wooden spoon for about 10 minutes (not less) so that the water evaporates enough. A crust has to develop on the bottom of the pot.
5. Take it off the stove and let it cool. Then mix in the eggs, one at a time, always mixing it until smooth.

To finish:

1. Heat up your oven for  200 °C conventional heating.
2. Fill in a piping bag with the batter for bigné. Form round mounds on a baking sheet.
3. Bake the bignè for 10 minutes on the middle rack, without opening the oven. Then lower the temperature to 180 °C and bake until lightly brown for another approximately 15 minutes. Bignè will puff up in the oven. They should be light like a feather and hollow inside.
4. When bignè are cooled, fill the piping bag with the cream and fill them from the bottom.
5. You can powder bignè with sugar or decorate them with melted chocolate.

 

 

 

Enjoy!