This is the third part in the croquembouche (piece montee) series.
This part is the assembling of the croqueenbouche, you will need to have done the cream puffs and the creme patissiere.
Croquenebouche is a pyramid of cream puffs fille dwith creme patissere using caramel as glue.
I will let my wife report on the Caramel as she does it better than i do.
With a small pointy knife of a small pastry tip, poke a hole in each of the cream puffs on their underside. blend the cold creme patissere with a fork, and fill a piping bag with it. Pipe the creme to the puffs and set them aside.
In the serving dish, make a pyramid shape. I used a Tagine lid wrapped in foil.
Make a caramel and dip the puffs upside down then arrange them on serving plate.
This is incredible! Could you picture a college student-version of this? I imagine any shortcuts would not produce good results…
Actually, in terms of equipment, this does not require anything special.
For the creme patissiere, a pan is all you need; for the cream puffs, a pan to make the batter, the piping bag can be replaced with a zip lock that you clip a corner off with a pair of scissors.
A toaster over should do the trick for cooking them but you will need to adjust the quantity. with the quantities stated, i made two full half sheets of puffs. Maybe start with a quarter of that. If you don’t have a silicone mat, wax or parchment paper should do it.
For the ingredients, eggs, flour, sugar, milk, water, butter. The only slightly exotic would be the corn starch and the vanilla extract.
You could also skip the creme patissiere and focus on the cream puffs and fill them with vanilla ice cream, them pour some warm chocolate. Voila! Profiteroles.
Or you could add cheese to the batter and make gougeres.
If you have a deep fryer, you can make pommes dauphines: mix the batter with some mashed potatoes and fry.