Sunday, May 30, 2010

Daring Baker Bites Dust Making Croquembouche

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.

My First Challenge was Steamed Chocolate Pudding & Steamed Apple n Caramel Pudding . Croquembouche as my second challenge was such a humbling experience...... I was very excited about making profiteroles and putting together a pile high mountain of them into a Croquembouche.... But as fate would have it... 2 weekends spent... Alas, no Croquembouche......


What I got was an awesome 'Crème Patissiere' which obviously was flavored with COFFEE :) and some not so great 'Pate a Choux'. It is this batter which is used for making chocolate eclairs... my absolute favorite..... I had huge dreams to taking this tower of goodness for a farewell party....


Getting ready to add the eggs and get a really runny batter.... *Wail*.....*Wail*.....*Wail*.....

The runny batter won't pipe on a baking tray... So I pulled out my muffin tray to give the runny batter some support while rising.... They rose beautifully n I was so excited.... dancing arround the house..... As soon as I pulled them out of the oven, a few collapsed and when I extracted these from the tray..... To my Horror I got HOLLOW shells of pastry... Well, they tasted very nice.... Yet, I know there has to be something wrong I was doing... What... What..... What?????? I was so disappointed....

A phone call to Deeba and I knew what went wrong...... Couldn't make my second attempt in time for this post.... But that doesn't mean I'm giving up..... Next weekend, Another try.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

oh no! what happened to the choux? at least you had a batch of the creme patisserie to feast on even if it was without the pastries...