cooking challenge week seven: croquembouche (french wedding cake)

This cooking challenge was fantastic. I had a great time with the various phases involved. Although it sounds sort of complex, it's totally worth it, and for "wow" factor, you can't go past it. Plus, who doesn't love pastry puffs with sweet, sweet custard?!

Profiteroles.

You will need:

75g unsalted butter, cubed

3/4 cup water (room temp)

3/4 cup plain flour, sifted

a pinch of salt

3 eggs

What to do:

Preheat oven to 200'c.

Put the water, salt and butter into a large saucepan and bring to the boil. As soon as the water starts to boil, remove from the heat immediately and whisk until the butter has melted.

Return the water mix to a very low heat and add the sifted flour. Beat enthusiastically with a wooden spoon until it forms a thick dough and holds together.

Whisk one of the eggs in a small bowl and then add to the dough. Stir well. Repeat with the second, and then the third. This should form a glossy, moist dough.

Put the dough into a large piping bag with a neat nozzle and squeeze golf ball size portions onto a greased baking tray. If you don't have a piping bag, you can just use spoons. Space them evenly as they will swell in the cooking.

Bake for 25 minutes. The profiteroles should be puffed up and bronzed. Remove from heat and poke a tiny slit in the base of each profiterole to let the hot air escape. Store in an airtight container until ready to pipe the custard in.

The Custard

You will need:

2 cups full fat milk

6 egg yolks

3/4 cup sugar

1/3 cup plain flour

1/2 teaspoon vanilla essence or slit vanilla bean

1/2 teaspoon other flavour (optional - I used almond essence)

What to do:

Bring the milk and vanilla essence (or vanilla bean) to the boil in a large saucepan then remove from heat.

In the mean time, combine the sugar and egg yolks in a mixing bowl and whisk until doubled in volume (about 2 minutes). Sieve the flour over the top and stir until combined.

Pour the now warm milk into the egg mixture. Add additional flavour if using now. Return to the saucepan and over very low heat, whisk manually until the custard has thickened to your preferred consistency. Refridgerate until the day you're making the croquembouche.

The croquembouche:

Finally, to pull it all together, pipe the custard into the base of the profiteroles. This takes practice and can be a bit messy, but you'll get the hang of it. Each profiterole should "puff" up about .5cm as you fill it with custard. Yum yum.

To make the toffee, put a cup of caster sugar in a bone dry saucepan and set over low heat. don't stir, or add water, just leave it to sit until almost all the sugar has turned into bronze goo. Only then can you whisk any remaining caster sugar (it's a fine balance as you don't want to burn the sugar but if you stir the raw sugar into the melted too early then it will go lumpy). Be very, very careful when working with hot toffee. Set the saucepan onto a safe surface. Dip the base of each profiterole into the toffee and place on a comport or round cake board. After you've placed the first layer, use a spoon to drizzle some more toffee over the tops. Carry on until you've formed a pyramid. (It may become necessary to return the toffee to very low heat again if it gets too hard to work with).

Now, here's the fun part! Poke any decorations of your choosing in between the profiteroles (rose petals, blueberries, mint leaves, raspberries etc) or just leave plain. Using two forks twirl toffee around the outside of the croquembouche. It will form little toffee strands that give it a mystical look.

Just before serving, drift some icing sugar over the top. Delicious!