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.
I have always wanted to make a croquembouche, ever since Cookie made one for Simon and Vicky's wedding on A Country Practice way back in the early 1980s, and this month was my big chance. (I used to want to be a country vet just like Vicky when I was in primary school - it is a big leap from that to becoming a city lawyer!) Unfortunately, because of time constraints due some pretty full on personal things in my life at the moment, I only had time for the bare minimum, and my croquembouche is not the thing of wonder that I might have hoped. However, it is done, looks something like it is supposed to, and tastes good.
Here are my cream puffs:
I liked the method for making these in the recipe - so much easier than making a roux. Unfortunately, my puffs were a little flat, which influenced the final shape of my croquembouche. No matter - they tasted good!
I chose to make the vanilla pastry cream recipe provided by Cat:
Even though I only had 17 puffs, I only had enough pastry cream to fill half of them, so I filled the remainder with whipped cream.
I was originally going to use caramel to glue my croquembouche together, but after seeing the video of the Aussie guy on YouTube making a croquembouche with chocolate glaze, I was converted and did that instead. He made it look so easy!!!!
I filled the puffs, then melted chocolate, dipped the bottoms of the filled puffs into the chocolate, and arranged them on a 9" round pastry board. Finally, I piped chocolate drizzle all over the assembled croquembouche.
Thanks to Cat for choosing this challenge. She will have the recipe up on her site. To check out what the other Daring Bakers did with this challenge, visit the Daring Bakers blogroll.
19 comments:
I can't even pronounce it!
All I can say is YUM!
Well done they look lovely and golden. Thanks for your comment.
I like your finished shape - it looks sort of like a voluptuous lady! The flatter style profiterole is obviously fashionable.
hehe I love an A Country Practice reference! Yours looks great! :D
Never heard of these before but they sound good.
Wonderfully done! Glad you were finally able to make a croquembouche too!
I love the challenge and the main thing is it taste good.
Ciao ! Wonderful job ! Even if in trouble you made it sooner than me ! i hope I'll get it done today !
Great technique with the chocolate glaze. Adding chocolate to the recipe in the guise of sticking it together. Clever ;)
Wow..flat or not flat, it looks utterly delicious :)
I watched the same video and came to the same conclusion :) Yours looks good to me. Well done!
Wow--you're fast: you've already got another post up! I bet these were tasty.
:)
The taste of the final product is definitely more important than looks! And you can't go wrong with chocolate. Your croquembouche looks delicious!
Mmmmm these look so moreish....I think I could easily eat 5 of yours in one go they look so good!
I saw Simon and Vicky's wedding, too!! And I though the same!! So finally we did it! Congratulations! I so glad it tasted so good but I think the drizzle of chocolate looks good too. I might try chocolate next time.
I'd like to make one of these someday. I can't believe you got this done in the midst of your move!
Beautiful! Another DB challenge well-done!
You've just sent me into flashbacks of my first day at my internship for my culinary degree. The owners of the resort I'd been hired at wanted to see what I could do so, always prepared, I got my Professional Pastry Chef, 5th Ed., out of the car, flipped through, and selected a petite croquembouche for dessert.
Fortunately, they liked it. Unfortunately I was stuck making it for the next 2 weeks because they put it on the menu!
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