Before yesterday, I had no idea what a croquembouche was besides it being a funny french word. I saw a post and it was the fanciest thing I’ve ever seen: a tower of cream puffs each hand-dipped in caramel and then spun together with caramel twine.
I’ve never made cream puffs, choux pastry, or pastry cream before this. I did it all last night and it was surprisingly easy. The cream puffs themselves would make for a great party platter. I followed the recipe for choux pastry and pastry cream from The Flavor Bender. It was all so good!
Tips
- My oven is hotter than other ovens. My cream puffs were perfect at the 23 minute mark – different from the 30 minute mark in the recipe for choux pastry.
- For the spoon test of the choux pastry, perform it only when the choux pastry is cooled.
- For the caramel twine, make sure your caramel cools enough that it creates thin long strings when you lift the caramel up from a fork. You want the caramel to cool to this specific point or else you’ll end up with globs of caramel.
- With all of your leftover egg whites, use them to make macarons!
