CROQUEMBOUCHE!
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.
Now see, had I been smart, I would have thought this through at the beginning of the month and figured "Hey! I should make a lovely croquembouche for Mother's Day! My mom likes sweets!" And she does. She totally loved the croquembouche that I made at the last minute over the weekend, just because I had to get it done. But I'm clearly on another planet, and so the deadline rolled around and I wasn't anywhere close to a blog post.
I've found that working afternoon shift has meant a lot less options for baking. By the time I get home from work at night, it's 11:30, I need to cram in some semblance of dinner and give time to the people who missed me while I was off working. Not that I can drop right into bed right away, but living in a bungalow with parents and a brother who are working days and going to school, respectively, they hardly appreciate me clanging around in the kitchen at midnight, even if they do enjoy the finished product! Waking up early isn't an option either, since I'm not a morning person to start with, and the aforementioned "Not tired when I get home from work" thing usually leads to an episode or two of television (and just as shows are winding down and I thought I'd have a couple weeks with just Glee to entertain me, someone mentions that I should check out Doctor Who, which is clearly fabulous and now I'm hooked... *sigh*).
Also, did I mention that my brother roped me into going low-carb with him? Let me tell you, low-carb and Daring Bakers' Challenge are two concepts that can't be reconciled.
Regardless. Croquembouche!
It started with the lovely pate a choux, which I'll admit I thought I had screwed up multiple times. The milk boiled over my saucepan, then with every addition of the eggs I would be just about to the point of giving up on it ever coming together, and then it would miraculously combine perfectly in seconds. The puffs of dough were beautiful, though I think that next time (and believe me, there WILL be a next time!) I'll make my puffs just a touch smaller. I skipped the egg wash on these, since I'm really picky about things that taste really eggy, and I always find that egg wash ends up ruining otherwise delicious pastries for me.
Then came the pastry cream. Now, I love vanilla as much as the next girl, and who can say no to chocolate? But I've had a terrible craving since I first saw the posted challenge - I wanted my puffs filled with raspberry cream and dipped in chocolate glaze. When I finally bit into one of those babies, I almost cried (though, maybe that was the relief at getting some carbs into me!).
To the vanilla creme patisserie I added about 1/4 cup of raspberry reduction that I made by heating a pint of raspberries and smashing them up in the pan. I drained the mixture through cheesecloth, and got a nice clear reduction that flavoured the cream really nicely and gave it a lovely mauve colour.
I figured the assembly would be the hardest part. Clearly, stacking pastries together with chocolate glaze should be difficult, right? Wrong! It went together without a problem. It took about 15 minutes (though, admittedly, it was very small!), and looked delicious! I was even able to decorate it with raspberries dipped in the chocolate glaze.
And it must have been good! I headed out to see Sex in the City 2 with a friend (after a fairly lengthy nap!) and by the time I got home, it was decimated! Luckily, there were a few puffs of chocolatey, raspberry-filled heaven left for me!
