We recently sat down with Chef Patissier Antonio Benites, the chief pastry chef who’s delivering decadent, luscious confectionary and desserts to both of the Robuchon restaurants, and asked him to impart some of his culinary expertise to us.

Before arriving on our shores, Chef Benites had over a decade of experience in pastry, so you can imagine why we we’d want to learn some of his pastry recipes.

Ever the gentleman, Chef Benites shared with us his favourite Roast Pineapple Coconut Pie recipe which incidentally will soon grace the menu of L’Atelier.

Ingredients

Coconut Cream
200g       icing sugar
200g       butter
250g       shredded coconut
25g        corn starch
25g        Havana Club rum
150g       eggs (or 4 small eggs)
650g       whipping Cream

Pastry Cream
1160g    fresh milk
278g       egg yolks (or 14 egg yolks)
290g       sugar
116g       corn starch
116g       butter

Roasted Pineapple
1000g   sugar
2 pods   Tahitian vanilla
3g           pepper
30g         fresh banana
90g         Havana Club rum
2.2L        water
6 slices fresh ginger

2 whole pineapples about 750g each, sliced into halves lengthwise (reserve about 200g of sliced fresh pineapples for first layering)

 
Sugar dough

300g       butter
60g         almond powder
190g       sugar
1g           vanilla powder
120g       eggs (or 3 eggs)
2g           salt
500g       flour

Method

Chef Patissier Antonio Benites

1.       To make the coconut cream, mix well the icing sugar and corn starch in a bowl, then add the butter, shredded coconut, Havana Club rum, eggs and whipping cream.

2.       For the pastry cream, mix the eggs with sugar and corn starch in another bowl. Bring the milk to a boil and add in the eggs mixture. Constantly stir the mixture while it boils for 2 minutes, adding the butter at the same time. Remove from heat, let it cool and then refrigerate..

3.       To prepare roasted pineapples, caramelize the sugar in a pan over low heat and stir constantly until melted. Add in the vanilla, pepper, ginger, water, Havana Club rum and banana, stirring constantly for about 5 seconds until well-combined. Remove from heat and pour the syrup over the pineapple in a baking dish and bake in a pre-heated oven at 230°C for 1 hour. The pineapple should be soft to the touch and slightly browned. Remove pineapple from oven, let it cool and then slice to 7cm strips.

4.       To make sugar dough, mix well all ingredients in the order they are listed. Mould the dough into a 14-cm ring of 3mm thickness onto a baking tray lined with baking paper.  Bake in a pre-heated oven at 160°C for 10 minutes.

5.       Once the dough has cooled, fill it with the coconut cream, cover it with a few pieces of fresh pineapple and bake in a pre-heated oven at 160°C for 25 minutes.

6.       Spread the pastry cream with a little rum over the pie and finish by decorating with the roasted pineapple.

This recipe will be enough to serve six.

Do share with us whether you’ve succeeded in making your own Roasted Pineapple Coconut Pie, or come on down to L’Atelier to have a taste of it, and compare with your own.

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