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The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.
Croquembouche, which means crunch in the mouth, is the traditional wedding cake in France. The traditional croquembouche is a pyramid of profiteroles (cream-filled puff pastries) dipped in chocolate, bound with caramel, and usually decorated with threads of caramel, sugared almonds, chocolate, flowers, or ribbons. This dessert was so much fun to make. It looks impressive, but really is not that difficult.
The recipe has three main components: the pate a choux – the shell, the crème patissiere – the filling, and the glaze used to build/decorate it. I loved the pate a choux recipe. It was quick and easy and I was really pleased with how my puffs puffed up.
I decided to make a caramel cream pastry filling because I thought it would pair wonderfully with the hard caramel glaze, but I may have cooked the caramel too long and it was sort of bitter and I wished I would have used our favorite pastry cream filling.
My family also wasn’t crazy about the hard caramel glaze, too much crunch in the mouth for us. If I make it again, I would definitely try the chocolate glaze. Since we love chocolate éclairs, it would be more like a tower of chocolate éclairs with spun sugar on the outside.
My favorite part of the challenge was definitely the spun sugar decoration. I had never worked with spun sugar before, but once I got comfortable with cooking the caramel, creating the sugar strands and corkscrews was easy and so fun. There is a great video on About.com that teaches you how to make the beautiful sugar corkscrews.
Visit the Daring Kitchen Recipe Achieve for all the challenge recipes and the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see the gorgeous croquembouche the other Daring Bakers created. Thanks Cat for hosting one of my favorite DB challenges.
If you like cream puffs, you’ll be sure to love my recipe for chocolate elcairs!
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Daring Bakers’ Croquembouche aka a Cream Puff Tower
Ingredients
Pate a Choux:
- ¾ cup 175 ml. water
- 6 Tbsp. 85 g. unsalted butter
- ¼ Tsp. salt
- 1 Tbsp. sugar
- 1 cup 125 g. all-purpose flour
- 4 large eggs
- For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt
Chocolate Glaze:
- 8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet
Hard Caramel Glaze:
- 1 cup 225 g. sugar
- ½ teaspoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Pate a Choux
- Pre-heat oven to 425°F/220°C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Preparing batter: Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.
- Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
- Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly. (I used my Kitchen Aid mixer for this and the next step.) Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes. It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.
- Piping: Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.
- Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).
- Baking: Bake the choux at 425°F/220°C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.
- Lower the temperature to 350°F/180°C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool. Can be stored in a airtight box overnight.
- Filling: When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze. Use one of these to top your choux and assemble your piece montée.
- Chocolate Glaze: Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.
- Hard Caramel Glaze: Combine sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan with a metal kitchen spoon stirring until the sugar resembles wet sand.
- Place on medium heat; heat without stirring until sugar starts to melt around the sides of the pan and the center begins to smoke. Begin to stir sugar. Continue heating, stirring occasionally until the sugar is a clear, amber color.
- Remove from heat immediately; place bottom of pan in ice water to stop the cooking. Use immediately.
- Assembly of your Piece Montée: You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best.
- Once you are ready to assemble your piece montée, dip the top of each choux in your glaze (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up.
- When you have finished the design of your piece montée, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers, etc. to decorate.
Antonella-Vera55
barbara,it's fantastic!!!Congratulations on your taste, and also for the delicious recipe and pictures!have a nice weekend
elra
Wow, astonishing sugar work here Barbara. You did it very well!
Cinnamon-Girl
I didn't know these were wedding cakes in France – so interesting. I love how you decorated this – it's really gorgeous! Too pretty to eat!
teresa
gosh that is SO pretty, i am in love with the spun sugar, it looks fit for a queen!
Mimi
So elegant! You did a fantastic job with you spun sugar.
mimi
Pavithra
OOoooooooooooh the cute piece montee looks gorgeous with the spun sugar and cute little curls.. I simply loved it…
msmeanie
Your spun sugar looks beautiful. Love the curls. Great job Barbara!
Brooke
Oh, Barbara… that is absolutely gorgeous! Way to go!
Cathy
What a gorgeous, perfect croquembouche. Your sugar work is amazing, Barbara. This is something one would see in the fine pastry shops in Paris.
Mamatkamal
Amazing! I LOVE LOVE the sugar swirls, absolutely beautiful. Bravo!
Khadija
Kim
The croquembouche is gorgeous Barbara and I love how you made the corkscrews (very, very impressive). Caramel is something I have yet to conquer in the kitchen. Sorry to hear this wasn't your favorite, but it is absolutely gorgeous. Great job!
Jamie
Oh, I love it! So beautiful and dreamy…. I love the curls. Perfect choux, too.
Renata
Your Croquembouche is so delicate, the curls are so thin and shiny, they're perfect! Great job! Thanks for your kind comment on my post.
Heather
Barbara your's looks amazing! I did go with the chocolate glaze but wished I'd tried the caramel one. Guess we will both have to try it again!
Memória
Bárbara, ¡tu croquembouche se ve fabuloso! Yo iba a hacer esos sacacorchos también pero después de tantos problemas, decidí no hacerlo.
P.S. Gracias por dejar un comentario en mi blog sobre mis dientes. Espero ir al dentista muy pronto porque no puedo comer casi nada ni puedo enfocar en nada con este dolor.
Marcellina
Barbara, your croquembouche is absolutely fantastic! I really love the caramel curls. I agree it really is an easy but impressive dessert. Great work!
chef_d
Looks gorgeous…especially the spun sugar corkscrews 🙂
Mags
I am so impressed with the spun sugar. So professional looking! What a great job you did.
Mardi @eatlivetravelwrite
Barbara you totally rocked this challenge! I am so impressed! I kinda wigged out a bit on this one – was just so happy the choux pastry came out ok but could not face the whole "tower" thing so took a few liberties with the "montée" part. It IS on my list and I am so inspired by creations like yours!!
tspegar
Barbara! This is gorgeous!!! You should be very proud. It looks wonderful. I am so impressed!