Nut cake

Prepare the pastry bases from choux pastry. Pour milk (100 ml) and water (100 ml) into a large saucepan. Add room temperature butter (80 g), sugar (10 g), and salt (4 g). Bring to a boil over medium heat.

Remove the saucepan from the stove, add the flour (120 g) all at once, and whisk until smooth.

Return to medium heat and dry the dough until a crust forms on the bottom of the saucepan. Transfer the resulting mass to a bowl or mixer bowl and let it cool to 50-55 degrees.

Add eggs in portions (200 g), mixing the dough with a mixer or whisk until smooth.

Transfer the dough to a piping bag with a 'closed star' tip and pipe round bases for pastries (about 6-7 cm in diameter) onto a parchment-lined baking sheet.

Bake in a preheated oven at 170-175 degrees with convection for 20-25 minutes, until the bases rise and acquire a rich caramel color.

Prepare the cream. Pour milk (300 ml) into a saucepan, add vanilla, and heat without boiling.

Whisk the yolks with 50 g of sugar until pale. Add starch and mix thoroughly to avoid lumps.

Remove the vanilla from the saucepan with milk. Add about a third of a cup of milk to the yolks, mix thoroughly until smooth, and then pour the resulting mixture into the saucepan with milk, remembering to whisk the mixture.

Cook the cream for about 3 minutes, stirring continuously over medium or slightly lower heat. The cream should thicken and hold on the whisk. Remove the cream from the heat and add diced cold butter, mixing thoroughly. When the cream becomes glossy and homogeneous, let it cool to 50-60 degrees.

Add about 50 g of nut praline to the cream and mix thoroughly to distribute the praline evenly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap touching the surface of the cream, cool completely, and place it in the refrigerator. Before filling the pastries with cream, take it out of the fridge and mix with a mixer to incorporate air and make it fluffier.

Chop the pecans and hazelnuts not too finely.

Put the cream in a pastry bag and fill the pastries with cream through the hole at the bottom.

Prepare royal icing. Pour powdered sugar into a bowl and mix it with lemon juice, stirring thoroughly into a uniform, slightly sticky mass.

Dip the tops of the pastries in royal icing.

While the glaze is not fully set (which happens very quickly), sprinkle the tops with nuts. Refrigerate the pastries until serving.