Croquembouche

The day has come where we accomplish the croquembouche!
A whole lot of work and effort, but all so worth it in the end...

First off, what is a croquembouche?
For all of you who do not know, a croquembouche is a French pastry that is traditionally served at weddings and religious events. It is a high cone of pate a choux filled with pastry cream and then dipped in caramel and bound together. Traditionally the layers are alternated with sucre gran (sugar crystals). Other components also include sugar work, flowers or ribbons!


Shall we begin...

We started on Thursday by making our pate a choux and nougatine for the base or basket that the tower would set into.

                      Chef Kristin doing a demo of the nougatine

                       Piping a border for the basket

                       String work for our basket

Then we made a sugar piece out of isomalt to ask a topper for our tower.
An organic fountain shape:)

So pretty!:)

Now time to stack the choux for our tower.

 So each puff is dipped in caramel laid out on a silpat to dry and then the stacking begins in our ring.

After two layers are stacked and alternated we pull it out of the ring and continue stacking into a tower shape using the hot caramel as our glue.


And Ta-Da!!

Chef Kristens example of the tower. See we added the tower inside the basket of nougatine and topped it with the fountain and added the orchids we made last week.

My croquembouche....not bad for the first time, the only thing I did not have time for was the string work. ah...next time!

-N