Lisa: Croquembouche

I had been considering trying my hand at making a croquembouche--which is a fancy French cake that is basically a tower of cream puffs held together with carmel and surrounded by a web of spun sugar--and Kaeleigh and McKenna's joint Great Gatsby birthday party (which I already mentioned in this entry on vintage hairstyles) seemed like the perfect opportunity. Plus, croquembouche is the perfect cooking project for me: impressive result, fairly easy to put together, and not at all practical or nutritive.

I was running super late for the party and trying to get out the door, so I didn't have time to take photos of the completed dessert. It was glorious, though. There were sparkles and sugar daisies. Anyway, I swiped a few pictures from Kaeleigh's Facebook albums that at least give pictorial evidence that my croquembouche really existed. (If you check out those photo albums, be sure to look for the Robert Redford movie being projected on one wall, which made an incredible backdrop.)

This entry from La Cerise was the most helpful when I was putting my croquembouche together. Lots of sites like this one will give you more help on how to make caramelized sugar if you haven't done that before, and I'll tell you my number-one secret to making this project super manageable and fun: frozen cream puffs from Costco. Yep. More info on croquembouche construction after the jump!

Here's what I learned when I made my croquembouche:

1. Unless you're a baking purist, just buy one big box of frozen cream puffs at Costco. Seriously, they taste fine and using them takes all the hard, boring parts out of this process. You can even just pull them out of the freezer and start assembling the tower while they're still frozen. By the time you're ready to serve (long before, probably), they'll be defrosted. I noticed that Astrid at La Cerise had frozen her homemade choux before assembling, which gave me the idea--and I wouldn't even have attempted to make a croquembouche without this shortcut. I am too afraid AND too lazy.

2. The paper cone upturned in a vase on La Cerise is genius--absolutely the way to go. I wish I had buttered mine so it would have slipped off a bit more easily.

3. Be prepared to work FAST. You have to keep the caramelized sugar warm enough to stay pliable without browning it too much. Have everything ready and laid out with a plan in mind before you start the sugar process, and don't leave the sugar cooking on the stove and go start working on your hair. Even if the sugar does get too brown, though (as mine did), all is not lost. It makes the finished caramel have a more crackly texture and a more bitter flavor, which is actually kind of good. The crunchier caramel is more structurally strong than the delicate cream puffs, though, so they're hard to get apart without bursting or breaking the puff. If that happens, just use a fork to break off a hunk of tower wall onto your plate. Problem solved.

4. Caramelized sugar burns like a mother, and you're reaching down into a paper cone with a handful of it and pressing it into a mass of more hot caramel. For heaven's sake, be careful and have some cold water nearby.

5. Strings of caramelized sugar get everywhere--when you're swooping each dipped cream puff over to your paper cone and especially when you're whipping a spun sugar cage around the finished product with a fork. Then those little strings harden like the candy they are and coat everything in your kitchen with a hard, sticky shell. I wish I had covered my work area with a layer of aluminum foil, like Chica and Joe did when they made the candy jewels for their incredible Princess Peach cake.