It was the one and only Croquembouche, the all important tower that many attempt and fail... ant say I was really an exception haha. As I am sure you can tell I wasn't too pleased with my attempt, but I tried nonetheless!
My biggest downfall was probably not ensuring I had all the utensils needed, most importantly the correct piping nozzles for the profiteroles and filling.
For those who don't know what a croquembouche is... simply put.. its a tower of cream filled profiteroles, each topped with caramel and spun with the sugar caramel once completed.
Might sound simple.. but it took up to 2.5 hrs to complete, and several burnt fingers later, it was done!
The first step was to make the pastry cream filling which requires two steps;
1) heating the milk and vanilla bean
2) whisking the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour
Then combine the two, whisk and place it back on the heat and stir until thickened
Problem #1: the filling didn't seem to be coming together quite as I had expected, it was quite runny, so I decided to whisk the mixture rather than stir with a spoon (like the recipe had suggested), and thankfully within seconds it began to thicken nicely.
Then you must spread the mixture on a tray to cool it down quickly and cover with cling film until its about 55'C, and then stir in the butter and refrigerate until cold.
Problem #2: My thermometer broke, so I kind of just had to guess and feel it to see if I thought it was approx. 55'C (nooo idea what 55'C really feels like, but my thought was its slightly hotter than body temp so I went with that ha)
After making the cream filling, it was onto the choux pastry (profiteroles). Thankfully I had made this before in hospitality prac in Year 12, so I knew exactly how to do it. You need to cook the butter, milk, sugar, salt and water in a pot and boil it, then add the flour and stir until it forms some sort of ball that comes off the side of the pot.
Once its cooled a little, you beat it to let out some more heat and then beat in the eggs one at a time until a nice pastry forms.
Now onto the piping. Some people might find this relatively difficult, but I love doing it, so I'm used to it! The only problem is I didn't actually have the right size piping tip for the balls, so they ended up looking like meringue shaped and where WAYYYY to big in size. No turning back now! haha This was one of those times that I just had to deal with what I had, cause I sure as hell wasn't making another batch of profiteroles :)
Once the profiteroles were baked and cooled (thankfully, they were nicely puffed up!) I then had to fill them with the cream filling. Once again I didn't have the correct piping nozzle, so this was very very difficult. Infact, after my first piping bag broke open, I ended up making the piping bag out of the zip lock bags which I usually do, but it made it very hard to pipe! After succesfully piping most of the profiteroles and finishing all the filling, I had just enough filled profiteroles to build the tower.
Then it was onto the caramel, probably the easiest part as far as making it goes; place sugar, water and glucose in a pan, bring to the boil and once it has turned a nice caramel colour, place the pot over a bowl of cold water to cool down, and then dip the profiterole base into the caramel and set upside down on a lined tray.
You also need to make the base of the tower by pouring the caramel in a cake tin so it's filled approx. 0.5mm high.
Once all this was done and set it was time for the assembly.
This basically involves using the croquembouche cone and placing the filled profiteroles around the inside with the caramel. Had I been warned, I would have worn gloves or some kind of hard core hand protection because my fingers were soooo badly burnt from that caramel. You practically have to stick your hand in it, because you need to coat the outside of the profiteroles in caramel so it sticks to each other and the cone. Once its all completed and the base is in place, I carefully turned the cone over, and held my breath hoping that the croquembouche comes out in one piece, the last thing I could have dealt with is turning it out and the entire thing falling apart. Luckily.. that was the one successful part of the dish :)
Now the finishing touches! Once the tower is up, it's time to decorate.. dip two forks back to back in it. Spin toffee around the Croquembouche and DONE!!! (I might have gotten a bit carried away with the spun sugar, but it was soo fun to do, despite the mess it made in the kitchen!)
Finished.. finito... fini...afinado, but not without scars to tell the tale!
Unfortunately, the tower didn't turn out how I had hoped, but when it comes to my desserts I am a perfectionist, and I guess I'm just happy this one was finished and standing up straight!
Check it out, here's the final product:
If anyone watched the finale of Masterchef, I'm thinking my next dessert is the guava and apple custard snow egg! Looks AMAZING!!! Until next time, Eat Up!
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