Why Don't You...
...try something new for dessert this holiday season?
I have a list of new things to cook up in the kitchen and challenge my dessert repertoire. First up: a French wedding cake also known as a croque em bouche, a stylish and fitting end for a festive holiday dinner.
Sadly, this isn't the croque em bouche spectacular I envisioned:
After burning my thumb and index finger while rolling the profiteroles in caramel, I had to take a break with my tower-building efforts and keep my finger under running cold water; consequently, the caramel got hard and I had to keep reheating it while working with one hand in the sink. It was rather comical, and, while I had visions of a tower of pastry cream-filled choux cascading with caramel punctuated with candied violets, I ended up with a droopy, unfinished mini-tower. Happily, my family dove right in anyway and enjoyed my attempts at finishing the spun-sugar strands with my one non-blistered hand.
The steps were fairly easy (minus the searing hot caramel portion of events) and I cannot wait to attempt this French "crunch in the mouth" delight again (hopefully with prettier results!).
Recipe for Croque Em Bouche:
Ingredients:
2 cups water
16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 teaspoons granulated sugar
2 cups flour
8 to 10 eggs
Filling, recipe follows
Caramel, recipe follows
Filling:
4 cups whole, 2 percent fat, or 1 percent fat milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise
12 egg yolks
1 1/3 cups granulated sugar
1/2 cup cornstarch
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
Caramel:
2 1/2 cups sugar
2/3 cup water
Directions:
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. In a large saucepan, bring the water, butter, salt, and sugar to a rolling boil over medium-high heat. When it boils, immediately take the pan off the heat. Stirring with a wooden spoon, add all the flour at once and stir hard until all the flour is incorporated, 30 to 60 seconds. Return the pan to the heat and cook, stirring, 30 seconds to evaporate some of the moisture.
Scrape the mixture into a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment (or use a hand mixer). Mix at medium speed. With the mixer running, and working 1 egg at a time, add 6 of the eggs, stopping after each addition to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Mix until the dough is smooth and glossy and the eggs are completely incorporated. The dough should be thick, but should fall slowly and steadily from the beaters when you lift them out of the bowl. If the dough is still clinging to the beaters, add 1 or 2 more eggs, and mix until incorporated.
Using a pastry bag fitted with a large plain tip, pipe the dough in big kisses onto a parchment lined baking sheet. Whisk 2 eggs with 3 teaspoons of water. Brush the surface of the dough with the egg wash to knock down the points (do not use all the egg wash.) Bake 15 minutes, then reduce the heat to 375-degrees and bake until puffed up and light golden brown, about 20 minutes more. Try not to open the oven door too often during the baking. Let cool on the baking sheet. The recipe can be made up to this point and frozen in plastic bags. Filling: In a medium saucepan, heat the milk and vanilla bean to a boil over medium heat. Immediately turn off the heat and set aside to infuse for 10 to 15 minutes. In a bowl, whisk the egg yolks and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the cornstarch and whisk vigorously until no lumps remain. Whisk in 1/4 cup of the hot milk mixture until incorporated. Whisk in the remaining hot milk mixture, reserving the empty saucepan.
Pour the mixture through a strainer back into the saucepan. Cook over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until thickened and slowly boiling. Remove from the heat and stir in the butter and any flavorings if you want to make a different flavor like chocolate or coffee. Let cool slightly. Cover with plastic wrap, lightly pressing the plastic against the surface to prevent a skin from forming. Chill at least 2 hours or until ready to serve. The custard can be made up to 24 hours in advance. Poke a hole with a plain pastry tip in the bottom of each cream puff and pipe it full of the custard.
Caramel: Dissolve the sugar in a saucepan with the water, making an "X" through the sugar with your finger to allow the water to slowly soak into the sugar. Boil to make a light golden caramel then dip the bottom of the pan in an ice bath to stop the cooking. Dip the sides of the puffs in the caramel and stick them together (approximately 20 cream puffs) in a circle, tops facing out. Make a second row on top of the first but a bit smaller to draw the circle in and create a tower of cream puffs. Check it from all sides occasionally to make sure it's straight. When it's finished, drizzle it with caramel all over. You can also stick on decorative elements with the caramel in the crevices, like candied violets, gold balls, gum paste flowers, sugar covered almonds, etc.
4 Comments | tagged Croque Em Bouche, Desserts in Dining & Recipes | Share Article November 30, 2009 
Reader Comments (4)
Looks delicoius...but, I would probably burn my hand and drop the caramel all over the floor!
You get two snaps for effort!
Two very big thumbs up for going for it! If you do it again, here are a few things I found that made building the croque-em-bouche easier to build:
1. use a cake ring or springform pan as the guide for your first few layers to keep the integrity of the shape.
2.n stead of rolling the choux puffs in caramel, dip the tops of each choux puff after they've been filled. If you look at the "inspiration" picture closely: caramel wasn't drizzled on it.
3. Plastic gloves & a fondue or chocolate dipping fork can really help with dipping them here to avoid burns (wipe a little oil on the fork to keep the caramel from sticking). You can then roll a few of them in sucre gran while the caramel's still sticky on the choux puff.
4. I also found that stopping the cooking of the caramel by dipping it in room temperature water (as opposed to ice water) & removing it immediately and then keeping it off a cool counter by keeping the pot on a cookie cutter gave me more working time since the counter wasn't leaching out any of the heat of the caramel. hope that helps!
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