The croquembouche: the tower of delight that looms large at a wedding reception. It knows that you know that you want some, with its sweet, fluffy, sticky, crunchy buns. What a tart. And with wedding season almost in full swing we have been experimenting with the croque construction conundrum: how to build?
To pile or not to pile? Upside down in a cone or upside up on a cone? And crucially, what glue is the best glue?! If feeding an army of half-cut wedding guests, the traditional stacking looks like a winner; the pile will be plentiful and hold its own as it’s demolished by greedy fingers. But for the smaller party, sticking them around a cone provides the drama of height and presence without squashed profiteroles at the bottom (and if you’re going to croque it you may as well show off)(not a natural Local Sauce trait, obviously). In this weeks Local Sauce lab, we opted for cone.
The building blocks for this sugary skyscraper (this construction analogy is just too good to let go) are so simple: choux buns with a creamy filling. For an added bit of fluff to our buns, we tapped into the knowledge of a Mr.J.Martin, throwing half a cup of water into a hot dish at the bottom of the oven to steam them as they rose, before piercing and crisping. He doesn’t lie! It works a treat, with plenty of space for the filling - crème patissière (or ‘chefs concrete’, I thank you Raymond Blanc for that one) for a proper job, or whipped cream for a quicky.
And so to glue: Chocolate vs Sugar syrup. In method one, our recipe championed melted chocolate as means to fix buns to base; a nice idea if building in, say, a fridge or a wind tunnel, but not in a little kitchen on a summer’s day. The little bunners just wouldn’t hold! With little warning and no fanfare, they gently slid down before an avalanche of buns hit the counter. Not so much a thundering collapse as a sticky thud. Thud. Thud thud thud. Thud. The thought of a sobbing bride, face awash with mascara and snot as she wails at the chocolatey heap is not appealing, even with the back-up arsenal of the ever comforting, “but it tastes great!”. Suffice to say, the chocolate method is a potential minefield. Avoid that one.
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| Croque and choc carnage. |
Method two: sugar syrup, which again requires some fairly rapid cooling to prevent subsidence (still going....). In House of Clever Hands we have at our disposal a fan; a massive, turbo, hyper-cooling beast with the thrust of a Boeing 747. I cannot recommend the cooling fan enough; when choux + glue hit cone, and they really aren’t going anywhere. As we worked from the foundations up (okay, that’s enough), the buns kept their shape beautifully, keeping their crispiness for the contrast of crunchy shell and explosion of the sweet, creamy filling. But before punching the air, there is of course the taste test... The Boy Wonder came home to find a monument to pastry and joy, and couldn’t help himself. “That’s really good that”.
Achieved.
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| Croquembouche with white chocolate and almonds |
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| Phoar. |
The recipes
For the sugar glue we dissolved 150g caster sugar in 250ml water before boiling the mixture for about 5 - 8 minutes until the mixture was super glue -py! It's handy to have a pot of water and a pastry brush to hand just in case the sugar crystallises at the side of the pan while it boils. Allow the glue to cool and thicken before use as croque glue. Good luck!
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