.croquembouche w/ lemon cream filling.

Last weekend, I went to a social at church. We were asked to bring a "dessert for one" wrapped as a gift. I spent about a week debating what to make. I had originally thought I'd make some kind of sponge cake with mousse filling, but I wasn't sure how long something would be sitting out and I didn't want the mousse to melt all over the place. That would have been a disaster! Well, I decided to make a croquembouche, which is a fancy word for cream puffs stacked all pretty like in a pyramid shape and draped with spun sugar.




Don't be intimidated by the picture. This is a very IMPRESSIVE, do-able dessert that makes a statement for parties, or even for intimate dinners. You can make the cream puffs bigger, or smaller, just make sure you keep the sizes consistent otherwise it'll look strange.



I filled the cream puffs with a lemon cream that brought these babies into a whole new dimension. The contrast of the tart with the sweetness of the spun sugar and caramel "glue" is pure perfection. I know you'll enjoy this if you make the recipe.



First, make the lemon cream filling.



Juice 2 small lemons or 1 large. You need 4 Tablespoons lemon juice. Zest the lemons too. You need 1 Tablespoon zest. Set aside.














In a bowl whisk 9 egg yolks, 3/4 cup sugar, the lemon juice, and 1/2 cup flour.

After whisking, pour it through a mesh sieve to remove any lumps or egg particles.







Put 2 cups cream in a saucepan and bring to a scald. Do not let it boil.

While whisking, pour some of the hot cream into the egg yolk mixture. This is called tempering the yolks. If you had added the egg mixture directly to the hot cream, it would have instantly cooked the eggs and made scrambled eggs. Ick. After whisking in some of the cream into the yolk mixture, add the yolk mixture back into the saucepan and put back on a burner and kick up the heat. Whisk constantly while this cooks so it doesn't burn on the bottom. It will start thickening up quickly.





As soon as it's thick, remove from the heat and add 1 Tablespoon butter and the lemon zest. Set the pan in a shallow bowl of ice water to stop the cooking process and cool the filing down.

To store, put in an airtight container and keep in the fridge until ready to use.

This filling can be made up to 2 days ahead of time.








For croquembouche, I use my basic cream puff recipe. Pipe small little dollops on a buttered cookie sheet and touch the pointy tips with a wet finger.



Bake at 375* until nice and golden brown. It's safer to overbake these a little so they don't collapse on themselves. We need them to stay firm.







When the cream puffs are baked and cooled, poke the bottom of each puff with a chop stick or any other tool that's similar.

Fill a piping bag with the lemon cream and stick the tip of the piping bag into the bottom and squeeze. Don't overfill.









I made a little cone out of cardstock and wrapped with foil. Since I was taking this somewhere, I needed a disposable base so I cut a piece of cardboard from an old box and wrapped that with foil too. To adhere the cone to the base, dip into the pan of caramel sugar and then press down. It cools quickly so you won't have to hold it down long.

If you're using a plate, use the same method.






For the caramel/sugar for spinning, put in a saucepan:
2 cups sugar
1/2 cup corn syrup
1/2 cup water

Put the pan over medium heat on the stove until the sugar dissolves. Let this cook until a candy thermometer reaches 110*.









Carefully dip part of each filled cream puff into the sugar and start stacking around the cone. There will be some gaps between each puff. That's okay. We'll camoflauge with the spun sugar.













This part is FUN but so messy. Make sure you put a towel down on the floor and put paper under the pans.

I put two saucepans down and sprayed the handles with Pam. Dip a fork into the sugar and drizzle it back and forth from the handles. Do this until you have a good buildup of thin strands of sugar.

This cools almost immediately so you don't have to let it stay for long. Remove from the handles and repeat until you have as much spun sugar as needed.

I put a silpat down on a cookie sheet and poured some of the caramel/sugar to create some designs. Break them apart when they cool and harden.

Carefully wrap the croquembouche with the spun sugar so that it spirals down the cone. Stick pieces of the broken sugar pieces around the cake, and at the top. Serve immediately!

.berry cream puff.

I had a luncheon today with some girlfriends. We all had our babies within a month of each other. We all had GIRLS! So we get together every month to hang out and eat and let our babies play together. It's a lot of fun. Today we had lunch at my house. I fixed some grilled chicken, grilled vegetable pasta salad (recipe below), greek salad (recipe to come), and for dessert...... berry cream puffs.



My husband insisted we didn't need a dessert for lunch. Puh-lease. I told him what I was thinking of making and he quickly jumped on board. LOL I guess you can have dessert with lunch!



I didn't want to do your typical strawberry shortcake, but I did want a fresh, fruity type dessert that screams SPRING! When I was at the store picking up supplies, I saw blueberries and blackberries with the strawberries. Mmmmm.... oh yah.



We made cream puffs daily at the bakery and filled them with pastry cream folded in with whipped cream, and topped the puff off with some ganache. Very popular. Making cream puffs isn't difficult, and they don't take very long to make. You will get a great upper body workout though from working in the flour and the eggs. Let me show you how to make them.



In a pot, put 1 cup water, 1/4 cup butter (cut up), and 1/4 tsp salt. Bring to a boil.

While you're waiting for the water to boil, break open 4 eggs and put in a bowl or measuring cup. You want to have all of your stuff ready to go because it's going to go fast and you won't have time to do all of this.

Butter a cookie sheet (I took that pat of butter off after I took this picture).

You want to butter this because those cream puffs will stick horribly bad if you don't.

When the water comes to a boil and the butter is melted, dump in 1 cup flour. Stir immediately using a wooden spoon. Stir until the flour is cooked and it begins to pull away from the sides of the pan and form a ball. Remove from the heat.

Add the eggs, one at a time, stirring well between each addition. This is what it will look like when all the eggs have been added. The reason why you want to add one at a time is if you dumped all of them in, it would cool your dough down too fast and you will get the wrong consistency and your cream puffs won't "puff" up the right way.

Spoon the dough into a pastry bag and pipe in a circular fashion little "hives". I made these puffs big today. Normally you can get about 8-10 regular sized puffs out of this recipe. You can easily double the recipe to make more.

Bake in a 375* oven for 35 minutes or so. You want them to be nice and golden brown. If you pull them out too soon, they will collapse as they cool. Big concern is you want to make sure the centers get cooked. Pull too soon and it'll be doughy inside. Our motto at the bakery with these were overbaking was better than underbaking.

Allow to cool.



In a bowl, mix together your berries. Like I said earlier, I used blackberries, blueberries, and sliced strawberries. Add a little sugar and some lemon juice. Let the berries macerate for awhile.

To assemble, cut the top off your cream puff. Take some whipped cream (which you can whip up while the puffs are cooling) and put a large dollop on the bottom half. Spoon some berries on top of that, then add another little dollop on top of the berries. Put the top back on.

Using a sieve, put a little powdered sugar in it and then tap lightly on top of the cream puff to dust them.

Garnish with a sprig of fresh mint.

[Chef's notes: Cream puffs are great for parties. Make the puffs a lot smaller and fill with chicken salad, or with pastry cream or just whipped cream. You can make them up ahead of time and freeze.]

Printable version:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dg2vfjqm_43c9tqv6cp