Piece Montée -also known as Croquembouche

Even the name sounds yummy.... cro-kemmmmmmm-booooooooshhhhh.

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. I was super excited when I this month's challenge, for a bunch of reasons...

1. I won't have to make anyone cry with my Daring Bakers' Challenge this month
2. It's French, and I adore all things French
3. I *love* pastry cream filled choux - one of the tastiest things on the planet in my opinion.
4. I am a stickler for real, honest-to-goodness, made-from-scratch pastry cream, and not powdered vanilla pudding.
5. I have made this dessert before (for my sis-in-law's wedding), and have always wanted to try it again, because I wanted to perfect it (word of advice - don't try and make/assemble a never-before-made dessert for 150 people an hour before you're supposed to beat a wedding, dressed-up and not covered in chocolate. Oh - and maybe make sure you have enough little choux to actually finish the piece montée, so you don't have to lop off the top and end up with a croquembouche that looks like this ------>)
6. I love French desserts.  Pretty much all things French, actually, but my absolute favourite are French things you can eat.
7. I've always wanted to do the proper spun caramel technique for it (you can guess why that didn't happen the first time - no time, and it's even less attractive to show up at a wedding with molten sugar burns on your arms)
8. It's stunning AND delicious, and that's a pretty killer combo in my books
9. It's FRENCH... wait, did I already say that?

So, first of all, I'm a little bummed that April's & May's DB challenges weren't switched, because I had a dozen events in April that this would have been perfect for, and I have none of those in May.  While I love girly, pretty French things, most of my co-workers are more...ummm (how do I say this?) ....they're more not into girly, pretty French things.  A big culture shock for me was to go from working in an industry with mostly women and a lot of gay men, to working with very few women and a lot of men who aren't even all that comfortable being around gay men.  So bringing this in for what have now become known in the office as "Baking Mondays", well, it won't get quite the same level of appreciation a dessert like this deserves.  (but boy oh boy, it would have at the flower shop...)

Anyway... I sat down with a good cup of coffee and began reading all about the challenge - no sweat, I can totally do this.  When it came time to actually make it however, I gave it a second read and noticed that "You must use the recipe provided for the the pate a choux batter however".  Sure thing, Cat, not a problem.  Your recipe doesn't look all that different from the recipe I normally... wait a second....NO MILK???????  Oh great, here we go again......

You may recall my recent, still-very-fresh-in-my-mind, battle with brioche and recipes that omit crucial ingredients.  Namely: milk.  Well, as soon as I saw this recipe used only water, I began going over and over the recipe, looking for some hint that this was a typo.  Nope, just water.  Hmm.  Ok (here's where I owe Little Miss Cupcake an apology ), I googled pâte à choux recipes to see if this was in fact an accurate version of the recipe.  Huge sigh of relief when I found several other recipes that were sans le lait.  whew!  Carry on.

I started out by making my pastry cream - exactly the same one I made for my Perfect Chocolate Éclairs. Tried and true and tasty.  Once the pastry cream was chilling in the fridge, I took a deep breath and started on my batch of choux.  Much to my delight, it worked and behaved exactly like the recipe I usually use avec le  lait, so I was worried for no reason.  My piping skills have even improved  considerably, thanks to the techniques Mardi at Eat.Live.Travel.Write. shared from her macarons class at Lenôtre.  (my piping skills really needed still need work - I've graduated to the lever where I can pipe blobs now... not much else).  Into the oven my petit choux blobs went.  When the timer finally went off, I took a deep breath and looked in the oven.  They were beautiful - I would have to say they were even bigger than mine normally are, so maybe milk-less is the way to go.  Filling them up with that lovely pastry cream didn't take very long, which meant I was soon ready to move on to the next step.

The Caramel.  I have made caramel sauce before - many times in fact - and each time seems to be a bit different.  But this isn't caramel sauce - this is just caramelized sugar.  That's all.  No water or added cream or vanilla or butter.  Just sugar.  However, one thing you should know about me is that I am a complete woos when it comes to the idea of burning myself, and playing with molten sugar scares the bejeezus out of me.  But I persevere, in hopes that eventually I will be able to do it and not hold find myself holding my breath the whole time - cuz that only makes you lightheaded and dizzy, which *significantly* increases your chances of getting a 3rd degree sugar burn.  Also, one of my goals for this year is to improve my caramel and sugar caramelizing skills (stay tuned for future posts and you'll get to see how that turns out).  This was as good a time as any to get in some practice time, right?  Besides, if you're going to participate in a baking "challenge" then there should be some aspect of it that challenges you.  (yeesh - that sounds more conceited than intended - let me elaborate)  Yes, so far I've lucked out two months in a row with DB Challenges that I already have experience making, but I also believe that luck is going to run out soon.  

So, given my inexperience working with just plain old melted sugar, I was a little apprehensive.  But, I took a deep breath, put some sugar in a cooper pot and lit the burner.  While keeping a very steady eye on my pot of liquifying sugar, I began roughly "dry-fitting" together the pieces for my first layer of the croquembouche, preparing in advance so I would know where to put the little choux once it was covered with hot caramel.  Pretty soon, the sugar was just beyond the point when it starts to smoke, so I plunged the pot into a bowl of ice water to halt the cooking process, and quickly got to work.  Maybe this was the prefect dessert to help me get over my fear of molten sugar, I was so distracted with all of the fitting together the choux blob puzzle, that I completely forgot to be freaked out.  Before I knew it, I had two full layers done and had zero burns!  WooHoo!  This is cool!  Now I can see why they use this as pastry glue for those amazing pieces they make on tv.  It's awesome!

Another thing I learned was why the croquembouche is traditionally covered in a halo of spun sugar.  Because a frothy veil of golden caramel acts as a really good cover for the mess.  You're not exactly going to use your finger to wipe away any smears or drips of 200˚ sugar, and I certainly had a lot of drips and oozes happening.  So, while I was glueing together my piece montée, I asked hubby to take one of my very large whisks and sacrifice it for the spun sugar cause.  Well, it took a little more tweaking after he trimmed off the rounded top of the whisk - he had to also bend the individual wires back out a bit, as they immediately collapsed on one another once they were cut.  Full of caramelly confidence, I was excited to give my "new" toy a try, and dipped the wire whisk into to the hot caramel, lifted it above the completed tower of choux and proceeded to spray hot sugar onto every surface in my kitchen while almost nothing landed on the croquembouche.  Awesome.  I went back for another attempt, but didn't fare any better the second time.  I abandoned that idea and figured that would be a lesson for another day.  I did, however, play around a bit on some parchment paper and made a caramel Tour Eiffel for a decoration.  Because after all, it's FRENCH!

So here you have it - my Piece Montée, complete with caramel.  Thanks so much to Cat (whom I should hate, simply because she lives in Paris and I don't), I had a blast making this, and you helped me face my fear of molten sugar, and I even survived unscathed!  ZERO burns to show for it!  YAY!

Pâte à Choux (sans le lait)

(Yield: About 28) - I ended up with 40
¾ cup (175 ml.) water
6 Tbsp. (85 g.) unsalted butter
¼ Tsp. salt
1 Tbsp. sugar
1 cup (125 g.) all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

(directions are exactly the same as they are for my "Perfect Chocolate Éclair" post, which is also where you will find my recipe for REAL Pastry Cream)

Caramel aka Molten Sugar Glue

1 Cup (200g) sugar
Put the sugar in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, and place over medium heat.  Keep a watchful eye om the sugar, and as the crystals begin to melt and darken, gently stir (using a silicone spatula only) the sugar to move the dry sugar to the bottom to even the cooking.  As the entire pot of sugar melts and begins to darken, it will begin to smoke.  Once it begins smoking, immediately plunge the bottom of the pot into a bowl of ice water to halt the cooking process.  If, while you are assembling your piece montée, the pot of caramel begins to harden and become difficulty to work with, simply return it over a medium flame on the stove until it melts to the proper consistency again.  Repeat as needed.

les macarons parisienne

As many of you already know, or are finding out, I **LOVE** Paris.  I love the architecture, the shopping,  the language, the culture, the people... everything - especially the FOOD.  And one of the Frenchest (is that a word?  yes, I'm going to go ahead and decide it is) things you can eat while in Paris is le macaron.  You can hardly walk down the street without seeing these shiny, colourful little sandwich cookies beckoning "mangez-moi" to you from a pâtisserie window.  In fact, the array of stunning window displays in Paris, crafted from macarons could easily fill a coffee-table book - and a stunning book it would be (hmmm... there's an idea, and one hell of an excuse to go back for a visit)!

For those of you who have not yet had the pleasure of tasting un macaron, they are, at their most basic, a sandwich cookie comprised of two almond meringue cookies and a filling of some sweet sort.  That description simply does not do them justice. The variety of colours, flavours, fillings and flavour combinations they are available in is absolutely limitless.   In fact, I would be surprised if you could find a pâtisserie in Paris that does not have at least a dozen varieties on hand on any given day.  Ranging from the simplest vanilla with buttercream or chocolate filled with chocolate ganache, through the slightly more sophisticated cassis-violette (backcurrant & violet), caramel au beurre salé (salted butter caramel), olive oil & vanilla (a personal favourite of mine), and upwards into the very daring (or some would call them bizarre), white truffle (the fungal kind), wasabi & grapefruit, ketchup,  and even fois gras - the competition among pastry chefs to create the hot new flavour is so intense that they can go a bit crazy in effort to out-do one another.  Macarons have achieved an almost cult-like following, so much so that they even have their own day;  le Jour du Macaron falls on March 20th of each year, when the leading pastry chefs in Paris donate the day's proceeds from macaron sales to their charity of choice.  To drive donations and traffic, they usually go all out with the varieties available and "sell" them at a discounted rate.

Needless to say, upon returning home to Canada, I decided I needed to learn how to make these magnificent little confections.  Trial and lots of error ensued (and still does), and I learned that even though they may look simple, they can be surprisingly finicky to make.  You see, there is an anatomy to the ideal macaron; the two cookies should each be perfectly uniform in size and roundness, with a smooth, shiny dome resting on the iconic ruffled foot or "pied" as it is called (don't kid yourself, this is the very thing that makes them so darned tricky to make).  The cookies will have a crisp outer shell, with a soft, chewy interior.  But it doesn't stop there... hugged between these two flawless, almond-y shells is a delectable filling typically made of either a creamy, flavoured buttercream, a silky ganache or a brilliantly fruity preserve.  Well at least that's what it "said" they should look like...

Had this been any other dessert, I would have thrown in the towel and given up long ago, especially with a success rate somewhere around 15% (like I said; lots of errors), but they're so delectable and A) you couldn't get them  anywhere in Edmonton until very recently, and B) I absolutely refuse to be beaten by a few lousy egg whites, some sugar and ground almonds!  So I soldiered on, read everything I could get my hands on and quickly discovered there are a few little tricks to achieving success - but, oh, yeah... even with all the tricks it can all go out the window if it's a little to hot or humid or dry or cold or cloudy or... who knows - my success rate is still only about 15%.

But because I love macarons so much, despite the apparently abusive relationship I have with them, I keep trying.  To that end, I've recently joined the fabulous ladies on MacTweets as part of their MacAttack macaron challenges.  YAY!  Now I can torture myself on a regular basis and blog about it too!  Seriously though, I see it as much of a support group as it is a teaching tool.  A place where I can turn when I have meringue in my hair and cracked, flat, or footless macarons.  They feel my pain, and what's more, they understand why I keep going back...

So this month's MacAttck Challenge has the theme of Spring Fling: Baking Your Favourite Springtime Flowers.  Perfect!  I'll crack the code on those delicious cassis-violette macarons I love so much!  Except for one thing: a person cannot find violet flavouring of any kind in Edmonton.  Trust me - I've looked.  Fine, 'Plan B' it is (well, more like Plan D or E...).  Anyway, after much fruitless grocery shopping, I turned to my pantry and decided to try my own wacky flavour: Saffron Vanilla Macarons it is! Saffron fits the bill perfectly - it's not only a flower flavour, it is an actual part of a flower!  Now it's not typically used in sweet applications, but who knows - it might just turn up on Pierre Hermé's menu this spring.

So, I went about making my meringue with my aged egg whites, folding in the almond/sugar mixture, and performing my little tricks (remember?);  completing the macaronnage, and waiting ever so patiently for that full hour  for them to dry just the right amount so that their little pieds would magically pop out beneath them when they baked.  Well, our Olympic athletes aren't the only ones getting gold today -  when I finally found the courage to peek through the oven door, I found my macarons have feet!!! WooHoo!!!  As for the Saffron Buttercream, it's not bad, but it certainly didn't knock my socks off.  I'll be stripped of my medal if the IOC ever finds out, but I did have to artificially enhance the colour a tad.  Saffron is known for it's bright orange hue, however, when it's diluted in buttercream, it comes out looking a lot like something that is much less appetizing (I'll spare you all the graphic comparison).

At the end of the day, I am pretty happy with my result.  The colour marbling effect that I tried wasn't as dramatic as I had hoped and I didn't quite have the flavour success that I wanted, but ultimately they are so pretty and quite yummy anyway, that I really don't care - there's always next month.  All that matters is that they have FEET!

Many thanks to Deeba and Jamie and all my new friends on MacTweets - I can't wait for the next MacAttack!

Macarons 
makes 40 sandwich cookies

3 3/4 Cups (315 g) finely ground almonds
3 1/3 Cups (380 g) confectioner's sugar
1/8 tsp salt

5 egg whites (190g), room temperature, aged 3 days

1/8 tsp cream of tartar
5 tsp (25 g) granulated sugar
1/2 tsp almond extract
1/2 tsp vanilla extract

Line two or three baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.  Fit a large pastry bag with a 1/2" plain tip; set aside.
In a food processor, process the ground almonds, salt and confectioner's sugar until the mixture is very finely ground.  Into a large bowl, sieve the mixture three times, to remove any large pieces or lumps.
In bowl of a standing mixer (if using a hand mixer, use a large, very clean bowl), whisk the egg whites on medium low speed until they frothy.  Sprinkle in the cream of tartar and increase speed to medium-high.  Whip until they are thick and voluminous (about a minute or so), then sprinkle in the granulated sugar.  Continue to whip until stiff peaks form - about 1 minute.  Be careful not to over-whip!
With a large rubber spatula, fold in about 1/3 of the ground almond mixture, followed by the almond and vanilla extracts.  Gradually fold in the remaining almond mixture until the mixture is very thick, and falls in a thick ribbon when the spatula is held over the bowl.
Fill the pastry bag with the mixture and pipe into 1-inch dots onto parchment-lined baking sheets - spaced about 3/4 inches apart.  The batter should slowly spread a little and become smooth and round on top.  Now we play the waiting game.......
Let the macarons sit at room temperature to dry - about 1-2 hours, depending on humidity (In Edmonton in February, it takes about 45 minutes - more than enough time to go apply another layer of lotion to your moisture-starved skin).
About 30 minutes before baking, place a rack in the centre of your oven and preheat to 300F.  If you normally bake with convection, I recommend you turn that feature off if your oven allows.  Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time for 14-16 minutes.  If you've done everything right, and the stars are properly aligned, and the macaron gods deem it so, you should have frilly little feet at the bottom of each perfect little macaron.  Transfer to a cooling rack and do your dance of joy. If your macarons are feetless, transfer to a cooling rack, take a deep breath and join the ranks of bakers world-wide who have felt your pain.  Allow the cookies to cool completely before filling.

Saffron Vanilla Buttercream
makes about 2 cups

2 large eggs
1/2 cup (50 g) granulated sugar
10-12 threads saffron
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Cup (226 g) unsalted butter, at room temperature, cut into 1-inch cubes

On the stovetopring a saucepan half-filled with water to a simmer.  In a small mortar & pestle, combine 1/2 tsp of the sugar with the saffron threads.  Crush until the saffron is finely ground - you should end up with a uniformly coloured powder.  In a medium, heat-proof bowl, mix together the eggs, sugar, salt, saffron mixture and vanilla. Place the bowl over the pan of water, and gently but continuously whisk the mixture until it is thin and foamy and registers 160F on an instant-read thermometer.
Transfer the egg mixture to the bowl of a standing mixer and whip on medium-high speed until it becomes light and airy and has cooled to room-temperature (about 5 minutes).  Reduce the mixer speed to medium, and add the butter one piece at a time. When half of the butter has been added, it may look curdled, but don't fret, that's how it should look.  Once all of the butter has been added, increase mixer speed to high and whip for 1 minute, until the buttercream is light and fluffy.
Fill a piping bag with the buttercream, and pipe half of the cooled macaron shells with about 1 tsp of filling.  Top with an empty shell, and gently press the two together until the buttercream presses out and is almost flush with the foot of the macarons.  Take a deep breath, admire your handy work, and savour the fruits of your labour.  Voilà!

Petits Boutons de Financiers

A few years ago, while visiting friends in London, hubby and I took a quick jaunt over to Paris for three whole days and two nights.  I was my first trip to France, and as soon as I stepped of the train at the Gare du Nord, I felt like I was home.  Everything about that short three days was wonderful, save the sore feet... you see, we tend to enjoy seeing a new city on foot, so that's how we spent all three of those days, only I had only brought one pair of shoes.  Well, I learned that lesson the hard (and sore) way.  To make a long story short, three days in Paris was not enough for me - I needed to get back there, and SOON!

The following spring, hubby and I headed to Paris for a full month.  We rented a fabulous petit appartement in the Marais (or 4e arrondissement), and spent four fabulous weeks strolling around the city and getting to know Paris that much better, along with a little side trip to Lyon and Arles.  We shopped at the local boulangeries, pâtisseries and the Monoprix (bien sur!), we drank cafés crèmes at  cafés and ate croque monsieurs, macarons and pain au chocolat and even conducted our own little taste test of the fabulous Plaisirs Sucrés made by the chef who invented it, Pierre Hermé, and those at Ladurée (where he was working when he invented - Pierre's won out, hands down).  I shopped at fabulous kitchenware stores and spent some wonderful days taking cooking classes at the famed le Cordon Bleu and Lenôtre, learning to make decadent grantinée dauphinios and just how seriously the French take their croissants.  One word of advice - if you ever go to Paris and intend on taking cooking classes;  the classes at LCB are translated into English, at Lenôtre they are not, so make sure your 'Food French' is up to par before you go!

But I digress (which seems to happen every time I get started talking about Paris)... many a day, we would spend hours in one of the many museums of Paris, or just exploring a different arrondissement, and while you cannot walk more than a couple of blocks in Paris without passing some type of establishment selling food, we did find it handy to have some sort of casse-croûte in our bag.  One of our favourite such snacks were these petits boutons de financiers which we would pick up from the Boulangerie-Pâtisserie Heurtier, just down the street from our apartment.  A small sack of these moist little almond, chocolate or pistachio cakes, the size of a nickel, really hit the spot when we were in need a bit of nourishment ('cuz, you know, otherwise we were going to starve... in Paris).

Upon returning home to Edmonton, armed with a new silicone bouton mold from Paris, I made it my mission to recreate those delicious little cakelettes we snacked on.  I searched cookbooks and recipe sites far and wide, even searching various cooking sites from France.  All the recipes were basically the same, and they were pretty good, but I never managed to find the recipe that reproduced the moist, tender financiers I remembered.  Until one day, however, when I was flipping through my copy of Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan, and suddenly there it was - the holy grail of financier recipes (I swear I could hear angels singing).  It was completely different from all of the other recipes in every possible way, from the ratio of ingredients to the method of preparation (it needs to be said - this recipe is much faster and easier... *bonus*).  I immediately broke out the butter, almonds, sugar and eggs and got to work.  The result: success.  Moist, tender, flavourful little treats than immediately transported me back to the rue de la Verrerie in Paris.

So here you have it: the recipe as it is in Dorie's book.  Don't worry if you don't have a financier or bouton mold - I imagine very few of you do - just use a small madeleine mold or even a miniature muffin pan and adjust the cooking time until they are just springy to the touch when baked.  Be careful not to over-bake them, or they're likely to be more dry than moist, and that would be a crime.  Oh, and I hope you were all paying attention when I posted about Browned Butter Blondies, because brown butter is one of the key components of Financiers...

Financiers (excerpted from Paris Sweets by Dorie Greenspan)

makes about 12 mini-muffin sized cakes

makes a lot more if using a smaller mold

Ingredients:

1 1/2 sticks (180 g) unsalted butter

1 Cup (201 g) granulated sugar

1 Cup (100 g) ground blanched almonds

6 large egg whites, at room temperature

2/3 Cup (90 g) all-purpose flour

Directions:

Put the butter in a small saucepan and bring it to a boil over medium heat, swirling the pan occasionally.  Allow the butter to bubble away until it turns a deep brown, but don't turn your back on the pan - the difference between brown and black is measured in seconds.  Pull the pan from the heat and keep it in a warm place.

Mix the sugar and almonds together in a large saucepan.  Stir in the egg whites, place the pan over low heat, and, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, heat the mixture until it is runny, slightly white, and hot to the touch (about 2 minutes).  Remove the pan from heat and stir in the flour, then gradually mix in the the melted butter.  Transfer the batter to a bowl, cover with plastic wrap, pressing it against the surface of the batter to create an airtight seal, and chill for at least 1 hour (the batter can be kept covered in the refrigerator for up to 3 days).

Centre a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400F (200C).  Butter and flour 12 financier molds (or whatever mold you are using). (Dorie tested with rectangular financier molds that each hold 3 tablespoons - the bouton molds I use each hold 1 tsp)

Fill each mold almost to the top with batter.  Slide the molds into the oven and bake for 12-13 minutes, or until the financiers are golden, crowned and springy to the touch.  If necessary, run a blunt knife between the financier and the molds, then turn them out of their molds and allow them to cool to room temperature right side up on cooling racks.

Note: Although the batter can be kept for up to 3 days, once baked, financiers are best enjoyed the same day they are baked... which is rarely a problem.