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.

Holy smokes, can I tell you how excited I was for this month’s challenge?! I’ve been quite busy this month with work (again) so I wanted to get this one out the way as soon as possible. I was the first Daring Baker to post a completed croquembouche, in fact! Croquembouche is one of those desserts I think of when people say “fancy desserts.” It’s a typical French wedding cake and in New Orleans, many I know have had them with their traditional wedding cake. For as much as I admired them and reeeally wanted to eat them…I’d never even seen one in real life!

I had pretty smooth sailing the whole way with my croquembouche. My pate a choux came together perfectly. Surprisingly to my husband, I’ve never made choux before and sat at the oven door the whole time they baked finally jumping up going “They’re poofing, they’re poofing!” I wish I had a better excuse for why I made the choux colors other than…I make everything colorful! I’ve made more bizarre colored pancakes Doug has hesitantly eaten and crazy colored cakes and cupcakes co-workers have looked at puzzled. Colors are more fun. Always. Top that with me just spending more than my dear hubby probably would have cared for me to at Bake It Pretty on fun cupcake liners and a ton of food coloring, this was bound to happen. I divided the pate a choux into 3 bowls and did one buttery yellow, one pink and one purple. The colors were lost a bit in the baking but not enough to worry.

For my pastry cream I used the included recipe and divided it in half, adding a good bit of melted semi-sweet chocolate to half with an extra splash of milk and some ground pistachios with a good pour of rosewater to the other half. I wanted to do the caramel glaze as opposed to chocolate and knew if there wasn’t chocolate somewhere in there Doug would be bummed. I’m normally not a chocolate girl, but the chocolate ones rocked! The caramel was much simpler than I thought. I’ve made hard caramel this way many times so that wasn’t a big deal. I was worried it would harden too soon or the inevitable burning my fingers dipping the choux. Only burned myself once and it wasn’t bad. I thought the sugar strands would be simpler but those were a pain! I had to wait for the remaining caramel to harden a bit and dipped my ball whisk in. When I pulled away I had silky thin sugar strands that I wrapped around as opposed to my earlier attempts at swirling the dipped whisk around the croquembouche. That just resulted in a zillion drips of caramel all over my floor, feet and counter.

BTW, I was told a finished croquembouche wouldn’t last long in the fridge- wrong! I left this puppy in our fridge for a few days of us off and on munching and it held up perfectly. The caramel softened a bit, but was still crunchy. The only fatality ended up being the zillions of photos I took of the thing! My computer is affectionately refered to as “Igor.” Formerly “Frankenstein.” I have a PC my dad built me back early in college and have over the years switched things out as the broke. The result is a pretty crappy, awful computer. It dislikes our camera and insists its not plugged in when it is. So photos get copied to the hubby’s computer and he sends them to me via DropBox. In a half asleep haze I was asked one day if I had the pictures saved off and I dumbly said yes when they weren’t. You can figure out the rest. They got deleted so hard it’s like I never made the thing! Thankfully, the 2 pictures I posted on the forums survived so I apologize all for the lack of photos and the smallness of the survivers. That aside, I absolutely had a blast with this challenge! Thanks Cat!

Piece Montée

Equipment required:
• several baking sheets
• parchment paper
• a whisk
• a pastry brush (for the egg wash)
• a pastry bag and tip (a plain tip or no tip is best for piping the puff pastry; you can use a plain or star tip to fill the puff pastry with the cream)
• a flat surface such as a baking sheet or cake board/stand on which to assemble your piece montée
• some of the items you may want to use to decorate your piece montée include ribbons, Jordan almonds, fresh flowers, sugar cookie cut-outs, chocolates, etc.

Ingredients:

For the Vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch)
1 cup (225 ml.) whole milk
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
6 Tbsp. (100 g.) sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
2 Tbsp. (30 g.) unsalted butter
1 Tsp. Vanilla

Dissolve cornstarch in ¼ cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil; remove from heat.

Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.

Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.

Continue whisking (this is important – you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.

Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

For Chocolate Pastry Cream (Half Batch Recipe):
Bring ¼ cup (about 50 cl.) milk to a boil in a small pan; remove from heat and add in 3 ounces (about 80 g.) semisweet chocolate, finely chopped, and mix until smooth. Whisk into pastry cream when you add the butter and vanilla.

For Coffee Pastry Cream (Half Batch recipe)
Dissolve 1 ½ teaspoons instant espresso powder in 1 ½ teaspoons boiling water. Whisk into pastry cream with butter and vanilla.

Pate a Choux (Yield: About 28)
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For Egg Wash: 1 egg and pinch of salt

Pre-heat oven to 425◦F/220◦C degrees. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.

Preparing batter:
Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.

Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.

Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.

Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.

As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes.

It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.

Piping:
Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip (I piped directly from the bag opening without a tip). Pipe choux about 1 inch-part in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high about 1 inch wide.

Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.

Brush tops with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with pinch of salt).

Baking:
Bake the choux at 425◦F/220◦C degrees until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.

Lower the temperature to 350◦F/180◦C degrees and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Can be stored in a airtight box overnight.

Filling:
When you are ready to assemble your piece montée, using a plain pastry tip, pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.

Use one of these to top your choux and assemble your piece montée.

Chocolate Glaze:
8 ounces/200 g. finely chopped chocolate (use the finest quality you can afford as the taste will be quite pronounced; I recommend semi-sweet)

Melt chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Hard Caramel Glaze:
1 cup (225 g.) sugar
½ teaspoon lemon juice

Combine sugar and lemon juice in a saucepan with a metal kitchen spoon stirring until the sugar resembles wet sand. Place on medium heat; heat without stirring until sugar starts to melt around the sides of the pan and the center begins to smoke. Begin to stir sugar. Continue heating, stirring occasionally until the sugar is a clear, amber color. Remove from heat immediately; place bottom of pan in ice water to stop the cooking. Use immediately.

Assembly of your Piece Montée:
You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best.

Once you are ready to assemble your piece montée, dip the top of each choux in your glaze (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up. (You may want to use toothpicks to hold them in place – see video #4 below).

When you have finished the design of your piece montée, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers, etc. to decorate. Have fun and enjoy! Bon appétit!