Croquembouche

Croquembouche is a French dessert that is often served at weddings, baptisms, and first communions. They are usually decorated with sugar, chocolate, flower, ribbons, nuts, and threads of caramel. Each profiteroles (the individual puff balls) are filled with pastry cream. I heard that the tallest Croquembouche was 15-feet tall, but the one I made was only about 15 inches.

Here you can see the other sides of my Croquembouche.  Those designs with the flower, butterfly and swirls were piped out with extra choux dough.  The traditional Croquembouche actually has a nougatine or poured sugar base. But my class didn't have enough time to make the base so we designed ours without it.

Ingredients

• pate a choux
• pate brisee, pate sucree, nougatine, or poured sugar (for the base)
• granulated sugar
• pastry cream
• decorations, (for finishing)