Having completed my practice croquembouche in Hong Kong several weeks ago, it was time to bake another croquembouche for family Christmas dinner. See earlier post for the full recipe and croquembouche made in Hong Kong.
For this croquembouche for Christmas day, I made several adjustments to the decorations – instead of randomly scattered profiteroles coated in coconut and crushed peanuts, this one contains layers of coconut and plain profiteroles.
My practice croquembouche also didn’t have any spun caramel as I wanted to keep the tower relatively neat. However, after several complaints about it not being a ‘real’ croquembouche without the spun caramel, I did manage to drape some caramel neatly around the profiterole tower. This caramel later melted due to the 35degree heat in Melbourne on Christmas day 😦
Overall, the family was very happy with Christmas dessert – from admiring the tower during dinner to eating the 80 leftover profiteroles several days after Christmas. The only bad feedback was from my sister-in-law who wasn’t too happy that I took the tower apart.
Now, to decide what to bake for Christmas next year …
Since moving to Hong Kong in February this year, I have been baking using a portable oven (besides my trips back to Melbourne). For those of you who haven’t lived in Hong Kong before … the apartments are small and most apartments have tiny kitchens without ovens. Although this portable oven (around the size of an Australian microwave) is great for cooking and basic cakes, the temperature isn’t very even or reliable so I haven’t been brave enough to try baking macarons in Hong Kong. But I am dying to bake some sort of pastry … so I decided to try a choux pastry!
My favourite eclairs are the salted caramel ones from Chez Dre in Melbourne and the world-famous eclairs from Sadaharu Aoki in Tokyo. Having no prior concept of what makes choux pastry puff, I’ve always marvelled at how patisseries manage to fill the eclair with custard without cutting the eclair open. Turns out it’s quite simple! 🙂
My portable oven in Hong Kong – great for basic baking but I haven’t been brave enough to test macarons in this
Ingredients:
Passionfruit custard:
200g passionfruit, seeds removed
350ml milk
2tsp vanilla been paste
4 egg yolks
100g caster sugar
50g cornstarch
20g unsalted butter
Choux pastry:
125g bread flour, sifted
100ml milk
100ml water
10g sugar
1tsp salt
100g unsalted butter
4 eggs
Chocolate ganache:
200g chocolate
150ml cream
Meringue:
2 egg whites
180g caster sugar
65ml water
Instructions:
Passionfruit custard:
whisk sugar and egg yolks until pale.
whisk in the cornstarch
heat milk and passionfruit over low-med heat until simmering
pour 1/3 of the milk/passionfruit into the egg yolk mixture whilst whisking, then pour the entire mixture back into the rest of the milk/passionfruit
place back on low heat, stirring constantly until the custard thickens
remove from heat and stir in the vanilla paste and butter
cover in glad wrap with the glad wrap touching the surface and set aside to chill in the fridge while making the eclair shells
Choux pastry
Preheat oven to 200°C
Place the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt into a saucepan over low heat
Once the mixture just comes to a boil, take off the heat, pour in all the flour and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon (it should now look like mashed potato)
Place the mixture back on low heat and continue to mix for another 2-3mins until the dough forms a ball and comes away from the sides of the pan
Pour the dough into a bowl and mix with wooden spoon to cool slightly before adding the eggs
Add the eggs one at a time and ensure each egg is well incorporated before adding the next egg. This allows greater control over the amount of egg to ensure the mixture doesn’t become too runny from too much egg
The mixture is ready when you lift the wooden spoon and the dough slowly falls off the spoon
Place dough into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm star nozzle lines around 10-12cm long. Be sure to leave enough space between for the eclairs to expand in the oven
Bake for 10mins at 200°C and then reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for another 20mins
once removed from the oven, use a toothpick to poke a whole through each meringue to let the steam out. This prevents the eclair shell from becoming soggy or sinking
set aside to completely cool before adding in the custard
Piped choux pastry ready to go into the ovenChoux pastry puffing up in the oven
Chocolate ganache:
Bring cream to boil and pour over dark chocolate. Set aside for 2 minutes
Mix in the melted chocolate with the cream
stir in the butter, and set aside to cool slightly
Assembling the eclairs:
once the shells have completely cooled, poked three holes evenly spaced along the top of the eclair
place the custard into a piping bag fitted with a long narrow tip and fill each eclair with custard through the three holes
coat the top of the eclair in chocolate ganache using a spatula
Many blogs tell you to poke the holes and fill the eclairs from the botton of the eclair shell however I prefer to pipe it through the top so I can cover up the holes with ganache.
Eclairs coated in chocolate ganache
Meringue:
whisk egg whites until foamy
heat sugar and water over low-med heat until the syrup reaches 120ºC
while whisking the eggs, pour the sugar syrup in a thin stream down the side of the whisking bowl
continue to whisk the eggs until it form stiff peaks
place the meringue into a piping bag fitted with a petal tip and pipe the meringue onto the eclairs. you could also use other piping tips to create other patterns
Carefully piping the meringue onto the eclairsnom nom … all that delicious meringuetorching the meringue
To finish … torch the meringue and decorate the eclairs with raspberries and mint leaves 🙂
Finished eclairs!! Photo: IG __Salpal__ready to be eaten … so delicious :p … Photo: IG __Salpal__
Time required: 3 hours for the choux pastry, another 2 hours for filling and assembly
Difficulty: ★★★★☆ … Moderate to Difficult. Each step is relatively simple, however it takes time and patience to bring the whole thing together
Challenge:
After baking four cakes for Christmas dinner last year, I needed to bake something bigger and better for Christmas this year. However, an added challenge this year is that I am now living in Hong Kong and will only have one day to bake Christmas dessert once I arrive back home in Melbourne on Christmas Eve. This means I need something that can be baked in less than one day, can feed a family of 9 and also satisfies the requests I usually get from family: coffee, coconut, sweet, not too sweet … and of course it needs to have a touch of Christmas.
Enter croquembouche: makes ~80-100 profiteroles and can feed 15-30 people, it can be decorated to resemble a Christmas tree and you can make a range of fillings to meet every request … AND they look SPECTACULAR.
Inspiration:
I first saw croquembouche as an Adriano Zumbo challenge on Masterchef Australia several years ago. Touted as a very difficult challenge on Masterchef, I never even thought about making a croquembouche until several weeks ago when I was desperately thinking up Christmas ideas.
Having never baked profiteroles before, I read several blogs, watched a range of youtube videos and viewed countless Instagram photos in search of inspiration for decorating to make it fit the Christmas theme.
I decided to use my eclair recipe for the choux pastry. As for decorating, I went for a ‘cleaner’ croquembouche without the caramel strings and added pops of texture by coating some profiteroles in coconut or crushed peanuts. I also found some lovely ribbon at the Eslite Bookstore in Hong Kong to top off the croquembouche.
This post details my ‘practice’ croquembouche … I will be making the real one on Christmas Eve and will upload an update post-Christmas 🙂
Ingredients:
Choux Pastry (makes ~100 profiteroles):
310g bread flour, sifted
250ml water
250ml milk
250g butter
30g caster sugar
8-10 eggs
2tsp salt
Custard filling:
950ml milk
8 egg yolks
120g caster sugar
80g corn starch
30g unsalted butter
2tsp vanilla bean paste
For decorating:
500g sugar to assemble the croquembouche
200g crushed peanuts
100g shredded coconut
Note: you could also use sugar crystals, pearls or anything else you would like to decorate the individual profiteroles
Instructions:
Choux pastry:
Preheat oven to 200°C
Place the water, milk, butter, sugar and salt into a saucepan over low heat
Once the mixture just comes to a boil, take off the heat, pour in all the flour and mix thoroughly with a wooden spoon (it should now look like mashed potato)
Place the mixture back on low heat and continue to mix for another 2-3mins until the dough forms a ball and comes away from the sides of the pan
Pour the dough into a bowl and mix with wooden spoon to cool slightly before adding the eggs
Add the eggs one at a time and ensure each egg is well incorporated before adding the next egg. This allows greater control over the amount of egg to ensure the mixture doesn’t become too runny from too much egg
The mixture is ready when you lift the wooden spoon and the dough slowly falls off the spoon
Place dough into a piping bag fitted with a 1cm plain round nozzle and pipe balls around 2-2.5cm in diameter
Dip a fork into water and slightly flatten the piped circles. The fork indents also reduce cracking in the oven
Bake for 10mins at 200°C and then reduce the temperature to 180°C and bake for another 20mins
Custard filling:
Whisk together egg yolks and sugar until pale
Add in the cornstarch and whisk
Place milk over low-med heat until it comes to a light boil
Remove milk from heat and pour 1/3 of the milk into the egg mixture while continually whisking
Pour the egg mixture into the remaining 2/3 of the milk and place back on low heat. Continue to whisk until the custard thickens
Stir in butter and vanilla
Transfer this to a bowl to cool – at this stage you could also break the custard into smaller batches and create several flavours by whisking in melted dark chocolate, fruit puree or coffee syrup
Cover in glad wrap (with the glad wrap touching the surface of the custard) and refrigerate until it’s time to assemble the croquembouche.
Ready to go into the oven
Puffed up in the oven
decorated with caramel + crushed peanuts and coconut
Construction begins
Assembling the croquembouche:
Transfer the custard into a piping bag fitted with a long piping tip and fill each profiterole with custard. Be sure to poke the piping tip through the side of the profiterole which will be facing the inside of the croquembouche
Melt sugar over low heat until all the sugar is melted and is a light amber colour (you could also make a sugar syrup by adding water). Carefully dip the bottom of each profiterole and place the toffee side up on the tray to dry – at this stage I also coated around half of the profiteroles with either shredded coconut or crushed peanuts
Trace a circle template on a sheet of baking paper
Construct the croquembouche by carefully lining the profiteroles around the circle; sticking each profiterole together using the toffee ‘glue’
The finished product!!
Tips for serving:
The profiteroles can be cut away from the tower using a pair of scissors
I also pulled together a bowl of dark chocolate ganache (150g dark chocolate, 100ml cream) for guests to dip the profiteroles into while serving
Whatever it bakes 