Crocquembouche

About a week ago I posted a blog about Choux and I wasn't able to get all the pictures up I wanted. So this is a continuation of the post about Choux.

Crocquembouche, pronounced like kroke -em- boosh, is traditionally made for weddings or baptisms.

A crocquembouche is a giant cone made out of profiterols, choux balls filled with pastry creme that are decorated with various toppings.

The one pictured about is Chef Toni's. She used the same choux dough to pipe out "FCI" for the top decoration. The base and stand is constructed out of nougatine (almonds and caramel). So the whole thing is edible... but I wouldn't recommend eating it cause it's nothing but sugar, sugar, sugar and a little bit of dough just to hold all the sugar together.

Each student made their own Croquembouche. It worked out perfectly for me cause I served mine at my wedding reception the following day. Another guy took his to his baptism but most everyone else just threw them in the compost.

Some of them didn't survive the night but most of them looked great!

To create the cone, each individual piece needs to be dipped into hot caramel. The caramel acts as a glue to hold the pieces together, but like any glue it has to dry first. The whole process is quite long and tedious because you have to hurry up and wait for the caramel to cool. It's also difficult to keep the caramel hot for a long period of time and there were several people who burned their fingers while dipping their profiterols in the caramel.

They can be decorated with roasted coconut, pearl sugar, pistachios, chocolate bits, caramel or even caramel swirls.

First Week In Pastry Training.

Sorry it's taken me a couple extra days for a new post. I didn't want to let it slide but things have been crazy here in nyc. I'm learning to juggle a whole new time table which is exciting and straining. Sorry without further a due....

I am officially (as some of my facebook friends may have noticed) a culinary pastry student. I have typical chef's whites with my name embroidered on them, super 80's plaid paints and a very sexy tool kit (more to come on that). So there is no denying the fact that I'm on the wagon and on my way.

The kitchen is set up much like a science lab, everyone at a work station with a partner and lot of tools. Typically there is a short lecture explaining the science behind what we are doing, followed by a demo and then we are sent to do our best to replicate what chef showed us. It's very straight forward and when everyone is on their A game, the class works like a well oiled machine.

The first day of class we hit the ground running, Chef Toni (the head chef) gave us some basic instructions and then we were off to make our first dough, a french dough called Patee Sucree which translates to 'sand dough'. It's an ever so slight sweet dough that is crumbly not flaky. It's used for a lot of basic sweet tarts. Which leads me to our first big project which was making an Tarte aux Pommes, apple tart.

This tart spanned the course of two classes and was relatively easy to make for yours truly although as a whole we had two causalities. The first being that an older gentleman in our class has already dropped out. I can't lie... I saw this coming from a mile away. He is a police detective with the NYPD and baking was something he "liked to do".

The second causality was one of the ovens was 'accidentally' turned up to 500 degrees while the tarts were baking. So about half of the classes' tarts were burnt. It was generally agreed it was an accident but I suspect it was a vicious crime committed by the same apple trees that threw apples at Dorthy in the Wizard of Oz.







However, I was lucky because I put my tart in the other oven. Yeah maybe I sabotaged the other oven but you can't prove anything!

My tart came out wonderfully perfect! (or at least not uber burnt). I was able to take it home on the subway and shared it with my friend Ariella (shout out!) and my roomie.

Even just through this first, relatively simple recipe I have already learned so many new techniques and tricks that a normal cook book (even the most detailed) could supply. My bench in right up at the very front of the room, right next to Chef's table to I get a great view of what she's doing and can ask her a billion questions all the time.

My Tarte aux Pommes with apricot nappage