37th Recipe: Pe`tanque

Petanque is a game much like bocce ball. Obviously played in France. To quote the recipe book…”This is the most time-consuming dessert to make in this book.” That certainly turned out to be true!! There are so many components in this dessert. Hazelnut cake, A hand-made chocolate box, hazelnut-almond praline, praline pastry cream, chocolate “gravel”(the court), and the pate-a-choux “players”, complete with craquelin. Here’s how it should look……

The hazelnut cake is used in the bottom of the chocolate box, spread with a layer of orange marmalade, then a layer of praline pastry cream is added followed by the chocolate gravel, which is simply chocolate mixed with praline and paillete feuilletine. If you remember from previous recipes, that’s like a crushed wafer-like cookie. Here is how mine turned out….

Not TOO bad for such an intimidating recipe !!!! The dessert ended up being VERY sweet. Much like a giant candy bar. A little too much hard dark chocolate for a lot of my tasters. The whole thing was only 5″ x 11″ and it took 3 days to complete. Whew! Glad I’ve gotten that one under my belt !