A demanding beauty

IP Lesson XIX-XX- Croquembouche

My Croquembouch, my dream wedding cake


I’ve been waiting for this lesson ever since I started my training in Le Cordon Bleu.

It has become personal since the Croquembouche is my dream wedding cake. For the uninitiated, the Croquembouche is a traditional French wedding cake made with a tower of profiteroles dipped in caramel on a nougatine base and decorated with spun sugar.

The French name, Croquembouche, loosely translate to “crack in the mouth” which refers to the crackle of the caramel as you pop one of those profiteroles into your mouth.

We spent two days preparing our croquembouche tower. The first day was spent baking the profiteroles, preparing the crème patisserie, and baking and cutting the nougatine sheets.

The second day was spent assembling our tower of profiteroles with caramel.

Day One was a disappointment for me. I wouldn’t make up any excuses for my below-par performance. Perhaps overconfidence has brought me down: As a result of letting my guard down, I ended up letting both my choux puffs and my partner down. It was an embarrassing episode for me especially after making choux pastry for the umpteen time.

What happened was I got carried away while adding the eggs and I added too much of it. As we all know, too much of something is not always a good thing, especially in the world of baking. My profiteroles didn’t puff up nicely as they should; in fact, they were pretty flat!

The day did not end with just the disappointment. Before I could sit around and mope, I was forced to confront my temperamental twin, Nougatine. This evil twin had me running to and fro the oven and my bench. By the end of lesson, my face was all flushed; beads of perspiration dotted my face and back; my arms were left aching.

You see, nougatine needs to be worked with when it is hot and pliable. That meant that you had to roll out the nougatine sheet before it cools down too much. Once it is cooled, it refuses to comply with you. Just like a difficult kid; nougatine simply snaps. You have to coax it by warming it up in the oven; however, you have to be extra careful, as overheating will over colour it.

Only tenacity will help you find a way with it.

“I’m going to whip you into shape,” I was lashing out a stern warning to my nougatine pieces. I still believe in the tough-line approach.

Some of my other course mates were coaxing their nougatine pieces.
Whatever the approach, we managed to cutting out our nougatine pieces ready for class the next day.

*

I went to bed that night with negative thoughts about my profiteroles.

I did not wake up feeling better. With the sinking feeling, I dragged my feet to the train station. But even while I was waiting for my train, I wanted to turn back for home.

I was facing the mountain of impossibility of having to stick my flat profiteroles together.

“Would my croquembouche even resemble one?” I thought to myself.

At that moment, my train arrived and left me with no time for any reconsideration.

I trudged on to class with heavy steps and a heavy heart.

“We’ll make the best with whatever we got,” my bench partner comforted me. With that, the both of us soldiered on.

Full concentration is an essential when assembling the croquembouche. Those negative thoughts dispersed the moment we started making caramel.

Caramel is made by heating up a sugar syrup to past hard crack stage (> 160 degrees Celsius). Imagine having to handle something of that temperature! If handling nougatine was like handling a difficult kid, handling caramel is like playing with fire.

A moment of distraction could result in dire consequences. All of us worked with the caramel with a bowl of ice water beside us- just in case. We were told of a story of how a student burn his finger in caramel and in reflex, used his other hand to swipe of the caramel and ended up ripping the skin of his finger off!

That being said, I find that to deal with caramel, one needs to be fearless. The more afraid you are, the more likely you will get hurt. Fearless was my doctrine for that day.

But I ended up with a burn on my thumb midway through my tower. I’m not going to try to pretend it didn’t hurt, because it sure hurts like hell. I dunk my thumb in the iced water and my entire face grimaced in intense pain.

You could hear expletives and swearing in the kitchen all through that afternoon. It is all the doing of caramel.

I would say that getting burnt was worth it the moment I pulled out the silicon paper cone that helped give the croquembouche tower its shape.
“Wow”
That was the only word that summed up how I felt at the point in time.

My very own croquembouche!

Chef noticed the lack of puff in the profiteroles but other than that, he said it was a job well-done.

Sadly, this might be the last croquembouche I would make. I have to say goodbye to my wedding cake dream. (Yes! Before this lesson, I was determined to make this for my wedding next year!)

The croquembouche is a beauty with too many demands; short shelf life of four to six hours; needs to be in a cool and dry place (fridge is not an answer with all the moisture). In hot and humid Singapore, I think that the caramel and spun sugar will sweat and melt before I say “I do”.

on a nougatine base decorated with nougatine triangles, bounded together with caramel and spun sugar

A beauty

The pressure’s heating up with the choux

Coffee eclairs

The greatest lessons in life are usually (95% of the time) from failure.
Failures faced are engraved so deeply in minds, even more so than successes.

I remember my failure with my coffee éclair when I attempted it last year. Everything was wrong from the consistency of the fondant icing, to the crème patisserie to the choux(‘shoo’) itself.

Incidentally, this happens to be one of the items that will be graded on during our practical assessment at the end of this term.

The éclair, seemingly and deceiving simple. After all, it is just made up of three components. Never underestimate it for it may be easy to make one, it is definitely not easy to make a great one. There are just too many cafes and patisseries out there serving lousy éclairs. The choux is often the problem resulting in poor texture. And the crème patisserie may be horrid as they try to cut cost by using inferior ingredients.

I’m no big fan of the choux pastry nor the éclairs. For me, the texture and taste just don’t cut it. However, despite my dislike for the éclair, I still have to master it to pass my assessment.

Chef M*ichael was prepping us for class and reinforcing how important this lesson was and how we had to take it seriously. That kind of set the tone and atmosphere of the class for the rest of the day. During practical class, everyone was so serious and tensed up that Chef M*ichael had to tell us to loosen up.

His attempts did little to ease the tension in the kitchen.

I was stressed out and so were my classmates.

Since we had our go at the choux pastry on Thursday already (just some profiteroles with chantilly cream piped in them), most of us did not have that huge a problem in making the choux pastry. The difficulty lies with precision and uniformity.

You see, we had to pipe éclairs that are twelve cm long, of a certain width. And we had to do it the same for every single one of our twenty éclairs, not just one. “Too skinny Chef,” exclaimed Chef M*ichael as he walked passed my bench. Apparently my éclairs were too thin and if I did them that way, there wouldn’t be space to pipe any filling. So I had to re-pipe my tray of éclairs.

As for the crème patisserie, we had our go at it during the fruit flan class. However, the crème patisserie is a tricky thing. Many things can go wrong and you can just fix it but throwing in some ingredients.

Perhaps this is one of the fundamental difference between patisserie and cuisine. If a soup stock is not salty enough, you can always add in more seasoning at a later stage but if you get a lumpy crème, you can only start all over again.

Back to the possible problems with the crème patisserie: If you don’t watch over it, you may end up with burnt milk. If you didn’t whisk it enough, you’ll get a lumpy mixture. And if you didn’t boil it long enough, it will become too runny. The list goes on. Many people ended up with bad crème patisserie (either too thick, too runny that you can’t pipe it). Thankfully, mine was alright.

The coffee fondant icing was another tricky thing. The fondant icing is just made of 2 part sugar to 1 part water, 5% glucose and coffee extract. That’s no doubt easy to make. To achieve the fondant with the right consistency to coat your éclair as well as to get the glossy shine so it makes your éclair look attractive is something that comes with experience. Just a note on the fondant: you should use it at body temperature (Which means about 37 degrees celcius). If it’s still too thick at that temperature, you do not continue heating it, hoping that it will melt somemore, you should add water to dilute it. So much theory and precision on just the fondant alone!

After making all the components of my éclairs, I didn’t have time to finish assembling it! So I brought everything home to complete it. I left the class feeling totally wiped out; I was exhausted, the day didn’t go too well and all I wanted to do was to go home and sleep. I’m glad that I went home and was motivated enough to finish everything up in the tiny kitchen of mine.

I’m pleased to say that the finished éclair was way better than my attempt at it last year. (See, we all learn from our failures)

Everything was right- choux pastry texture checked, choux pastry colour checked, crème patissiere consistency checked, shine on the fondant checked, overall look checked…well, maybe more colour to the coffee laced crème patisserie “It should be like a flat white/latte colour,” says Chef. Apparently my flat white and his differs. Ah well…