The Mighty Bouche

 The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a pièce montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.  

Remember when I signed up for that daring baker thing?  Well the first challenge handed to me was to make a croquembouche.  But here's the thing: I do not like croquembouche.

Now what, you ask, is a croquembouche?  It's a type of classic French wedding dessert, though nothing at all like a cake.  In essence, it is a conical tower of profiteroles (cream puffs) held together with caramelised sugar.  Then it gets decorated with all sorts of things, usually including spun sugar.

The construction is a bit tedious, but is able to split into different components: pate a choux, pronounced "patty chokes*", which is the "batter" used to make the cream puffs; pastry cream, the filling; and the final caramel, which must be made immediately before assembly (although...  I suppose you could make it ahead, let it solidify, and carefully melt it back down.  But I digress).

I've made one before, with my school partner Shane.  Here is a picture of us in mid-build:
 
That croaky-ma-boosh took us four hours, start to finish, using some thousands** of profiteroles and gallons** of caramel and cream filling.

So wait, now I'm supposed to make one BY MYSELF, ON MY OWN FREE TIME??  Ridiculous.  The mere mention of this sent a wave of wanton rebellion through my mind.  Ever the maverick, I quickly ran through a number of ideas that, while still following the challenge rules, would give me a good outlet for creative steam.  A model of Stonehenge?  Possibly a Croquembouche version of the NCC-1701-D?

Wait a second, hold up.  Remember this: I am not a croquembouche fan.  Do I really want to put forth a good deal of effort on this thing?  No.  Not really.  My final croaked bush ended up using eclairs instead of profiteroles (the challenge didn't specify shape!!!  it only said use pate a choux filled with pastry cream!!  i think i'm safe!!).  The idea was to build a Jenga tower out of eclairs.

The problem with eclairs is that they are soft and roundy, rather than firm and squared off like Jenga blocks.  And so, even with the hardening caramel holding the pieces together, it didn't get very tall before threatening to topple.  I tried to get some good strands of spun caramel around it, but the tower just wasn't cooperating.  Whipped out the camera, took a picture, knocked it down, stuck it all in the fridge.  There's still some in there.  Whatevs.  On to the next challenge!

Oh, you can check out other entries here.






*not really.  come now.
**quantities approximated

Baker Meet Blogger

You don't know a thing about their lives
They live where you wouldn't dare to bake...

Or at least, some of us wouldn't dare.  But I did.  Today's obscure song reference pays tribute to The Daring Kitchen, a secret culinary society into which I was recently accepted and given the role of Daring Baker.

What is this Daring business all about?  Well, it's really just a group of food bloggers, both bakers and cooks, who make a secret recipe each month.  Someone gets selected to throw out a recipe challenge on the first of each month, and then everyone has until the 27th of that month to make the recipe and write up a blog about the whole thing.

The deal is, the challenge is a SECRET!!!  We're not allowed to release the blog post until the 27th!  If we do so before, our membership is revoked!  Membership may also be revoked if we DON'T PARTICIPATE in the challenge!  This is legit!

My membership wasn't approved until after the April challenge, which was to make a traditional English steamed pudding.  Flip.  I basically live for a good steamed pud, but whatever.  The May challenge was released today, and let me tell you this: it's a doozy.  It's something I've done before, which is a plus, but I've never done it on my own.

Perhaps I've said too much!  They police the member's blogs for this stuff (maybe).

Anyway, it all sounds so fancy, and it sort of is, but consider this: anybody can join, and there are hundreds of members.  I really don't understand the secrecy of it all, because the only people who care about the challenges are in the club anyway, and so they know the deal.  But I don't mind the formalities; I think they're what make it fun :]