Croquembouche recipe Profiterole Tower

Croquembouche (crockenbush) are beautiful towers of custard filled profiteroles held together with caramelised sugar. This one is then wrapped in fine strands of pulled sugar. It looks impressive as a dessert centrepiece but is surprisingly easy to make.

Croquembouche Profiterole Recipe Ingredients
This recipe makes enough to make a croquembouche that is 27cm (10.63 inches) tall and 10cm (3.94 inches) in diameter at the base.

For the Choux Pastry Recipe
1 cup or 250millilitres (8.45 fluid ounces) Water
75g (2.65 ounces) or 1/3 cup Butter
160g (5.64 ounces) or 1 cup plain all purpose Flour
4 Eggs

Heat the oven to 428ºF (220ºC)

Place the water and butter into a saucepan and heat until the butter is melted. Add the flour all at once and stir until it thickens and leaves the sides of the pan, continue to stir and heat for another minute until it forms a really stiff ball.
Remove it from the heat and add in the eggs one at a time mixing really well after each addition.

Place into a piping bag and pipe dollops onto the baking tray.
Bake for 20 minutes at 428ºF (220ºC) or until crisp.

Pastry Cream Recipe
500millilitres (16.91 fluid ounces) or 2 cups milk (4%)
4 egg yolks or 60g (2.12 ounces) – (you can use the whites for macarons or pavlova)
3/4 cup or 164g (5.78 ounces) sugar
30g (1.06 ounces) or 3 Tbsp flour
Whip the egg yolks and sugar until pale, whisk in the flour. Heat the milk, you can infuse it with flavour while it is heating, see the video for more help with this. Add a little hot milk at a time to the yolks mixture whisking as you do. Return to the pan and stir until well thickened.

Crispy Caramel and angel hair
150millilitres (5.07 fluid ounces) or 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp and 1 tsp water
450g (15.87 ounces) or 2 cups and 1 Tbsp sugar
21g (0.74 ounces) or 1 Tbsp liquid glucose or light corn syrup
Heat over high heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Wash down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush. Leave unstirred until it just starts to go golden. Remove from the heat.

Construct the Croquembouche

Make sure you are using non-stick baking paper so that your sugar does not stick to your mold.

You can buy a stainless steel mold for making larger croquembouche but they are expensive, so for making smaller ones you can see the video for making your own.

by Ann Reardon

Resource: howtocookthat