0 Pile of Puffs

For our Daring Baker's challenge Cat of Little Miss Cupcake asked us to make a piece montée (aka croquembouche). The classic piece montée is a tall cone shaped tower of pastry cream filled cream puffs that are dipped in chocolate or caramel. The puffs are bound together with caramel to hold the cone shape.

There are 3 components: pate a choux (cream puff dough), pastry cream (to fill the cream puffs), and caramel or chocolate glaze (to "glue" the filled cream puffs into shape).

Making pate a choux is something I've done many times. You have to make sure the flour gets cooked until the dough forms a ball and there's a film on the bottom of the pot. Then it's ready for the eggs. I cheated a little and beat in the eggs using my KitchenAid stand mixer instead of by hand. The machine really helps work the dough so that the gluten will develop and hold the structure of the puff. But I've done it by hand in the past and have gotten successful puffs that way too. Using the given recipe and piping 1x1-inch puffs, I got 45 puffs which is way more than the 28 mentioned.

I didn’t really want to make a tall tower since it would be hard to transport it. So I made a sad little pile of cream puffs to photograph and keep for me and my husband. Thankfully Cat said we didn't have to make it super tall and that we're only required to make it a “mounted piece” meaning that it has some height. I know mine barely has any height and is a poor excuse for a croquembouche, but two people can only eat so much dessert. I filled all the remaining puffs, glazed them with chocolate and served them as individual cream puffs.



Even though Cat provided some recipes for pastry creams, she also gave us the freedom to use any crème patisserie we liked. I decided to make a coconut pastry cream since I was already making some for another baking project. I didn't feel like working with hot molten sugar so I chose to "glue" my puffs with melted chocolate instead of a caramel glaze. To finish them off I gave it a light dusting of finely shredded desiccated coconut just so you know that it's coconut.

So there you have it. Another Daring Bakers' challenge completed! To learn more about the Daring Bakers or to join the bakers, check out The Daring Kitchen.

The fine print:
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.

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