May 2010 Daring Baker's Challenge: Piece Montée

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Although the profiteroles are a very popular dessert here (they're filled with whipped cream and eaten with chocolate sauce), I've never dreamed about making them because they seemed too difficult for my current baking level -_-u Therefore I'm happy that the croquembouche was chosen as this month's challenge.
I was pretty nervous during the whole process (making the crème patissiere, the pate a choux and mounting the finished profiteroles) and surprinsingly I managed somehow to do everything right at first attemp!!! ^^

I chosed the chocolate glacé for 2 reasons: first of all because I'm used to eat the profiteroles with chocolate and secondly because I'm not very fond of the taste of the melted sugar caramel. And because I LOVE CHOCOLATE I thought that it was a good idea to bath the profiteroles in it instead of simply pour some chocolate sauce over them. I also melted a little white chocolate to decorate the Piece Montée.

The recipe:

Ingredients for the vanilla Crème Patissiere (Half Batch):

225 ml whole milk
2 Tbsp cornstarch
100g sugar
1 large egg
2 large egg yolks
30g unsalted butter
1 Tsp vanilla

Method for the vanilla Crème Patissiere:

1. Dissolve cornstarch in 1/4 cup of milk.
2. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan and when it's boiling remove from heat.
3. Beat the whole egg and then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture.
4. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.
5. Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking until the cream thickens and starts to boil.
6. Remove from heat and beat in the butter and vanilla.
7. Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Ingredients for the Pate a Choux (yield about 28):

175ml water
85g unsalted butter
1/4 Tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar
125g all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

I used more flour than the stated in the recipe (about 180g) because my mixture was too liquid.

Method for the Pate a Choux:

1. Pre-heat oven to 220ºC. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.
3. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.
4. Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
5. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.
6. Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.
7. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking. At this point add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.
8. Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip. Pipe choux about 1 inch-apart in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high and about 1 inch wide.
9. Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.
10. Bake the choux at 220ºC until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes.Lower the temperature to 180ºC and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Actually, the original recipe calls for an egg wash before baking the choux, but I omited this step because I was going to cover them completely with chocolate.

Method for assembling the croquembouche:

1. Using a plain pastry tip pierce the bottom of each choux. Fill the choux with pastry cream using either the same tip or a star tip, and place on a paper-lined sheet. Choux can be refrigerated briefly at this point while you make your glaze.
2. Melt 200g chocolate in microwave or double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning.
3. Dip each choux in the chocolate (careful it may be still hot!), and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up.
4. Melt some white chocolate and, using a fork, draw lines over your Piece Montée.

The profiteroles were delicious, though it was kinda messy to pull them appart to eat them ^_^U They were soooooo good that even my boyfriend (who doesn't like dark chocolate) said that he liked them (hurrah!!!).

Coffee meringues

I don't know why I didn't make this delicious meringues sooner! I saw them in dailydelicious the very day that they were posted, but I decided to make other things and so I put this recipe aside. Until yesterday. On friday I went looking for a small bottle of coffee liqueur, as I wasn't sure if I were going to make any other dessert that includes this, and yesterday morning I got into it. It's incredible how easy this recipe is! It only has a few steps and it seems to be foolproof, because I got them right on my first attempt, which isn't usual. The only modification that I dared to do was to use 100 grams of sugar instead of 114 grams of caster sugar.

The meringues are sweet and very "airy". It was a surprise when I put them in the box and lifted them to store them in the cupboard; it seemed that the box was empty! They're sooooo light! ^^ As you're biting them you think that you're eating something dry but they melt as soon as they reach your tongue. They remind me of the cotton candies ^^ And they're so full of coffee flavour! I made them of different sizes to try out which one is the best for me and I have decided on the small, bite-sized, meringue because the coffee + hazelnut taste is incredibly good, so next time I want to have that taste in every bite ^^