Hey all! I'm planning on bringing a dessert to the family Thanksgiving (I know, I know, but that's what they want from me) and I'd like to really impress. I was thinking of doing a croquembouche (specifically this one: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/croquembouche-recipe.html) but haven't ever done such an elaborate presentation (dessert or otherwise) - does anyone have any tips or advice? Am I being too ambitious? Thanks!
Posted Nov 17, 2016, 10:12 PM UTC
If you want to do this, do a dry run this weekend. Just pretend it's for next week and see what you think. The practice will be helpful regardless.
As of now, this is my plan! Dry run this weekend using u/flyinggeorge 's idea to construct a few mini croquembouches (croquembouchettes?) to see if I can make it come together.
Thanks y'all!
Good luck. Hope you can post some pics regardless of what happens!
See if you can find the master chef episode on YouTube that had this in the competition..
I made an attempt at a croquembouche a few years ago using the same recipe you mentioned. You'll figure out pretty quickly how much you need to "inject" into cream puffs. That won't be the tough part. The tough part will be making it look presentable as you deal with caramel that will burn your finger if you're not careful.
Mine tasted fine but didn't look pretty and the puffs rose to be much bigger than I wanted. Toward the end, I ended up cheating using toothpicks to hold it up because it was too cumbersome to reboil caramel, ice bath it, repeat for the whole thing, and not to mention have extra leftover to make the ribbon. To make things worse, the puffs stuck to each other because of the caramel's inconsistency and didn't come off effortlessly like the MasterChef episode in which I got the inspiration from.
Here's what mine looked like:
It's an ambitious and flashy recipe, and if you love a challenge, this is definitely that. Props to you.
I made a test run today (I may upload a pic later) and suffered the same incredibly agonizing caramel burn you did. I only made a few since it was a test but everything came out perfectly adequate except for the plating, which was hampered by my scalding the skin off my middle finger while applying caramel to the first puff.
HAve you ever made cream puffs before, and are you confident making them? If not I might consider something else. Would be a shame to go through all that work to get something mediocre. Or what if it just ends up looking kind of ugly?
If you're up for a challenge go for it, but I never make anything for a big family meal that I haven't made before. Especially something so heavy on presentation.
That's my concern. I've done mildly elaborate things (but nothing that approaches architecture) in my life, and I've done pate de choux before but never cream puffs. I'm fairly confident in myself making the filling, even if I never have. Still, I feel the same - maybe I'll do a cream pie or just a pile of caramel-coated cream puffs.
Maybe don't bring this if you're unsure about it. If you can make good choux paste and have some piping skills though, don't be so intimidated. I've never done these full size, but playing around, I made mini croquembouches. Basically I put four cream puffs on the bottom of a plate, glazed the tops with caramel and added four more cream puffs vertically but staggered so they weren't a straight line. My point here is that this is a good way to get comfortable and it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. And yeah I wouldn't sweat pastry cream. Just before your anglaise is done, add starch slurry until desired thickness is achieved.