Daring Baker Challenge: Croquembouche
May 27, 2010 | Print | E-mail | Filed under daring baker
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.
“Piece montée” literally means “mounted piece.” You may know this dessert by another name: croquembouche (“crunch in the mouth”). It is a traditional wedding cake in France, and is often served at baptisms and communions as well.
The choux in this challenge gave me a bit of trouble. I followed the directions exactly, and while the puffs were the right consistency (light, airy, and full of room for the pastry cream), they didn’t puff up very much. I even made a second batch and tried again, but I experienced the same results. I did halve the recipe, so I’m not sure if that caused a problem. It was also about 85 degrees in my kitchen, so perhaps the batter was affected by the heat and spread out too quickly on the baking sheet before I could get it into the oven. Other than that, this challenge was a fun one.
For the vanilla crème patissiere:
- 1 cup whole milk
- 2 Tbsp cornstarch
- 6 Tbsp sugar
- 1 large egg
- 2 large egg yolks
- 2 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1 tsp vanilla
For the pâte a choux (the ingredients below are for the half batch I made, and it yielded about 14 choux. Double each ingredient to make the full batch of 28 choux):
- 3/8 cup water
- 3 Tbsp unsalted butter
- 1/8 tsp salt
- 1/2 Tbsp sugar
- 1/2 cup flour
- 2 large eggs
For the egg wash:
- 1 egg
- A pinch of salt
For the chocolate glaze:
- 8 ounces finely chopped chocolate
To make the pastry cream, pour 1/4 cup of the milk into a small bowl, and add in the cornstarch to dissolve.
Combine the remaining 3/4 cup milk with the sugar in a small sauce pan. Bring to a boil, and then remove from the heat.
Beat the whole egg into the cornstarch mixture, and then beat in the two yolks. Pour one third of the boiling milk into the egg mixture to temper, whisking constantly.
Once tempered, pour the egg mixture into the sauce pan with the remaining milk. Continue whisking until the cream thickens and coats the back of a spoon. Remove from the heat, and stir in the butter and vanilla. Pour the cream into a stainless steel bowl and press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill in the refrigerator until ready to use.
To make the pate a choux, preheat the oven to 425 degrees and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Combine the water, butter, salt, and sugar in a sauce pan over medium heat. Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Remove from the heat and stir in the flour. Return to the heat and cook, stirring constantly, until the batter begins to pull away from the sides of the pan. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon to cool slightly. Add one egg. The batter should appear loose and shiny.
As you stir, the mixture should look dry, like lightly buttered mashed potatoes. Incorporate the second egg into the mixture.
Transfer the batter to a pastry bag with a large open tip, and pipe the choux about 1″ apart on the baking sheet. They should be about 1″ high and 1″ wide. Dip your finger in hot water and gently press down on any tips that have formed on top of the choux (you want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on the tops). Brush with the egg wash.
Bake at 425 degrees until well-puffed and lightly golden, about 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350 degrees and continue baking until golden and dry, about 20 minutes longer. Remove to a rack to cool.
To fill the choux, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux and fill with pastry cream.
To make the chocolate glaze, melt the chocolate in the microwave or a double boiler, stirring at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use immediately.
To assemble the dessert, use the glaze to stick the choux together and assemble them into a tower. When finished, decorate with remaining glaze, sugar, ribbons, flowers, etc.
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May 27th, 2010 at 10:49 am
They are just beautiful. Not sure I’d have the patience to make them, but I’d sure help eat them!
May 27th, 2010 at 11:20 am
Wow, so pretty!! Great job!
May 27th, 2010 at 11:35 am
These look wonderful! You did a great job. Yours came out so pretty. They sound delicious. I have never tried. Thanks for the great tutorial. I have been trying to get up the courage to join the Daring Baker’s Challenge. Now that the summer is here, I think I might..still noncommittal..lol. Definitely will try these, though.
May 27th, 2010 at 11:53 am
Thanks for testing out the halved recipe–I’m always looking for scaled down recipes!
Looks beautiful!
May 27th, 2010 at 12:23 pm
Looks gorgeous lady, I like the chocolate on top.
May 27th, 2010 at 1:17 pm
This is so beautiful! So beautiful in fact, it makes me a little sad, because I was talking to a friend last night who was contemplating making a croquembouche either out of a) store bought frozen cream puffs or b) twinkies. This looks a million times better!
May 27th, 2010 at 2:03 pm
your piece montee turned out lovely. I really like the drizzled chocolate effect. Mine didn’t puff very much either when i piped them, but i did try scooping them with a melon-baller and that seemed to help. It might have been a fluke though. but anyways great job!
May 28th, 2010 at 12:21 am
Yours look scrumptious. I like how you’ve drizzled the chocolate.
May 28th, 2010 at 7:01 am
I’ve made profiteroles a lot and croquembouche a few times, and it always seems to me that they’re best with just fresh whipped whipping cream (heavy cream in the US, I believe) rather than any creme patissiere, and served with a hot chocolate sauce (I just used a ganache last time, and that went down really well).
That said, these still look utterly delicious!
May 28th, 2010 at 9:36 am
Very well done! Your pièce montée is pretty!
Cheers,
Rosa
May 28th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
You did such a great job on this challenge! It looks delicious!
May 28th, 2010 at 4:58 pm
I am loving all of these daring baker desserts, they are all just gorgeous!
May 28th, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Very impressive, very delicious! Wow, wish I could do this.
May 28th, 2010 at 8:15 pm
Great job on this challenge!
May 28th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Lovely! They look beautiful
May 28th, 2010 at 10:10 pm
Beautiful job! Your piece montee’ looks great! I love the chocolate swirls!
May 29th, 2010 at 1:17 am
I think your puff pastry turned out really nicely. What a pretty dessert! You brought back some good memories because I took several courses at the Peter Kump Cooking School (now the Institute of Culinary Education) while living in NYC. How I wish I could attend those classes every week!
May 29th, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Humidity can definitely wreak havoc on a baker’s success, but these look perfect to me. I bet they taste absolutely delicious, too!
Am I the only one who just loves saying “croquembouche”? What a fun word.
May 31st, 2010 at 12:31 am
YUMMY! Impressive! I love how you pile them up and drizzle chocolate over.
June 1st, 2010 at 12:58 am
sooo pretty! you always do such a beautiful job! i love the way this looks.
June 1st, 2010 at 9:19 am
My husband made croquembouche when he was in culinary school. The funny thing is that all through his pastry class, he would talk about making choux paste, and I kept wondering why they were using shoe paste in pastry! (:
June 1st, 2010 at 12:05 pm
The chocolate drizzle looks so lovely, and yummy! Now I really really want some cream puffs.