Purple Sweet Potato Mont Blanc (モンブラン)

“Climb every mountain, Ford every stream, Follow every rainbow, ‘Till you find your dream…. A dream that will need all the love you can give, Every day of your life
for as long as you live….”

The Sound of Music is one of my favourite movies. And this song, ‘Climb Every Mountain’ is definitely one of my favourite too.

So I decided to climb my mountain this morning. The Mont Blanc, a popular French dessert among the Japanese. I have wanted to try this out some time back, but was quite detered by the complexity it seemed.

Since I have not gotten over the craze for purple sweet potato, I decided to modify the original recipe from http://www.cannellevanille.com/2008/11/montblanc-and-first-chestnuts-of-season.html.

Basically there are three components to this dessert.  The ingredients below can make 3 Mont Blanc (with base 3 inches in diameter)

A) Sable breton

• 80g    sugar
• 80g    salted butter
• 2        egg yolks
• 1/4    vanilla bean
• 112g  all purpose flour
•  1/2 tbsp baking powder

B) Crème Chantilly center

• 60ml heavy whipping cream
• ½ tsp. sugar
• ½ tsp. vanilla extract

C) Sweet potato cream

• 200g purple sweet potato (net weight, about 2)
• 3 tbsp whipping cream
• 40g sugar
• 60ml heavy cream, whipped to soft peak

Method

A. For the sable breton

1. In an electric mixer, cream the butter and the sugar together. Add the egg yolks and vanilla bean. Add the flour and baking powder combined until it incoporate. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and let it rest in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours.

2. Roll out to about 1/2″ thickness and cut 3″ circles with a round cutter. Place the circles in molds and bake at 160C for about 20 minutes or until golden brown.

 

B. For the crème Chantilly center:

Whip the cream with the sugar to still peak. Pipe out a dome shaped crème Chantilly in the center of each cooled sable Breton.

 

C: For the sweet potato topping:

1. Mash the just steamed and peeled sweet potato until smooth. Bring the cream to a boil, and add into the mashed sweet potato puree.

2. Press the cream through a fine sieve to remove any large sweet potato puree chunks. This is a tedious process. And of course a good training for the arm muscles. Fold in the softly whipped cream.

3. Place the cream in a piping bag with ‘mont blanc’ pastry tip (no. 234) and pipe the cream on top of the breton and crème chantilly dome. This is the fun part.

 There it was, my beautiful Mont Blanc in vibrant purple.

And I have praised much about the purple sweet potato in my previous post on purple ondeh ondeh. And more will be coming.

One important thing, the consistency of the sweet potato cream marks the success of this dessert. It must be just right to create that “spaghetti” effect. Too dry or runny would ruin the whole dessert.

So, enjoy climbling your own mountain.

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