Cheval Blanc Paris, Maxime Frédéric · Since 2021
The honey dessert
Maxime Frédéric’s honey dessert at Cheval Blanc Paris is built on his family’s farm: a honeycomb-shaped shell, a honey cream, buckwheat crunch and the butter of the Normandy herd, sold at Limbar with the Seine in the window.
Taste profile
Pair it with
A cup of chamomile, or a glass of Normandy cider.
Frédéric’s parents keep bees and a herd in Normandy, and the honey dessert is the piece that tells the story: a mould that looks like honeycomb, a light honey mousse, a cream with the farm’s butter, a crunch of toasted buckwheat and a heart of raw honey. At Plénitude it arrives plated; at Limbar it sits in the counter beside the croissants.
The dessert is the opposite of the palace spectacle: a taste of a farm sold on a quay in the centre of Paris.
The home version · serves 6
Ingredients
- 150 g raw honey
- 300 ml whipping cream
- 200 ml milk
- 3 egg yolks
- 3 sheets of gelatine
- 80 g buckwheat groats
- 60 g butter
- 60 g flour, 40 g brown sugar for the base
Method
- Toast the buckwheat in a dry pan until it smells nutty.
- Make a base: rub butter, flour, brown sugar and half the buckwheat, press into a ring, bake 15 minutes at 170 °C.
- Warm the milk with 100 g honey, whisk into yolks, cook to a custard, dissolve the gelatine, cool and fold in whipped cream.
- Pour the mousse on the base, chill four hours.
- Serve with the rest of the honey drizzled over and the remaining buckwheat scattered.
Where to taste it
