Croquembouche
Try making the more challenging but incredibly spectacular French dessert Croquembouche. It’s a pyramid of small balls baked in the oven and filled with a great cream filling, then glued together with caramel to form a pyramid, the latter still drizzled with caramel and sprinkled with icing sugar, or further decorated according to your imagination.
Ingredients:
Procedure:
1. Rinse a saucepan with cold water and put in water, butter and a pinch of salt, bring to the boil and add flour, stirring constantly until the dough stops sticking to the sides, when the mixture forms a smooth ball, set the dough aside for a few minutes
2. After the dough has cooled, beat in the eggs, one at a time
3. Line two baking trays with baking paper and shape the dough into balls 3 cm in diameter using two teaspoons or a dough decorator
4. Preheat the oven to 210 °C and place the trays with the balls in the oven (do not open the oven at this stage of baking, the dough will not rise!
5. After 10 minutes, reduce the temperature to 190 °C and bake the balls for another 12 minutes, then remove both baking sheets from the oven
6. While the balls are cooling, whip the cream and sugar
7. For the caramel cream, prepare a large pan, add the sugar, over medium heat let the sugar melt, do not stir, when the sugar starts to melt and turn amber, remove the pan from the heat and let the caramel cool
9. Stir 2 tablespoons of cream into the caramelized sugar and return the pan to the heat source, bring to a gentle boil, add the remaining cream, maple syrup and butter, stir and remove from heat source, use the caramel to “stick” the individual balls together
10. Dip the bottom of each ball into the caramel and carefully assemble a pyramid (you can use a paper cone as a support, which you can get at a confectionery store), or gradually flatten the balls on a flat cake tray, the base consists of 5 balls, the second tier 5, the third 5, the fourth 4, the fifth 3, the top one ball
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Note:
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