A Present of Profiteroles: Piece Montée

I was incredibly excited when I found out about this Daring Bakers challenge - I've always wanted to make a croquembouche. I've enjoyed working with choux pastry before and this time was no exception.

I realise that I haven't exactly made a croquembouche in the traditional sense - another time - but I reckon the old pastry masters such as Carême would see this as an acceptable piece montée. I've been watching some wonderful programmes on 4oD on Carême called Glamour Puds - if you're in the UK I recommend them. The unusual and often architectural centerpieces he made with pastry inspired me to try and do something a little different with my piece montée.

One of my flatmates informed me that if my rather heavy-handed description of croquembouche as 'sort of a mountain of profiteroles'  was incorrect in any way, she might cry... so, really, I didn't have a choice - this had to be traditional profiteroles. I also felt anyway that pastry cream would be a bit too heavy for this summer weather, so I was very happy to use softly whipped cream. This was also why I went in for chocolate glazes and decoration rather than the caramel.

As I was going for a traditional combination I've made before and not risking burns with spun sugar, I decided to get daring with the shape and chocolate decoration. The natural shift from a cone seemed to me to be to a cube. A cube that needs dressing up just made me think of a present... and so my present of profiteroles was born.

I made a cube mould from a few squares of cardboard cut from an amazon box, some greaseproof paper and liberal amounts of both sellotape and masking tape. It worked wonderfully - I just slid a palette knife around the edge after the completed stack had been in the fridge for half an hour or so and it just pulled easily off the top.

Since making my Beautiful and Damned cake, I feel a lot more confident working with delicate chocolate decorations. The no-need-to-temper chocolate I used for that came in handy again with this.  I decided to make 3D chocolate ribbons. I've seen people using thin plastic to make sheets and rings before so I decided to work with that idea to make these.

I made a paper pattern of how I wanted my bow to look, then I bought some laminated plastic and cut it in the shape of my paper pattern. The melted chocolate was then spread over the sheets, pinned in place and then left to cool.  The bow loops I made by attaching the two ends with a paper clip. The middle loop was kept in shape by a rubber band then just peeled off. The two loose ends I actually just held in shape with my hand in the freezer until they set, then put in the fridge.  

The flat sheets for the top and sides curled slightly as they set, which was annoying and meant that I had the spread, not shiny, side facing out. There were a few other problems and I managed to shatter one bow loop by mistake. There were also a few loose ends on the finished product and bits that weren't perfect, but for a first try it I was quite pleased.

To complement the dark chocolate of the ribbon, I used white chocolate to glue the four outside 'walls' and the top. I also didn't egg wash the buns as I wanted a lighter look for them too. The core was stuck together with liberal amounts of dark chocolate.

In the end I think the present comprised of about 100 profiteroles - I made three batches of the choux pastry. I used about a litre of cream to fill them. There was about 200g each of white and dark chocolate. In the end it fed 14 people, including some twice as we had more the next day. All in all, pretty epic. A wonderful challenge!

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.

Chocolate Profiteroles

(To make a small version about 1/3 of the size of mine - make a box with sides of approximately 4 inches. If you want a massive one, follow the quantities above!)

For the choux pastry:
175 ml water
85g butter
pinch of salt
1 tbsp caster sugar
125g plain flour
4 eggs

Preheat the oven to 425F/220C. Line baking sheets with baking parchment and prepare a piping bag. Combine the water, butter, salt and sugar together in a medium pan and stir as it comes to the boil and the butter melts. When it boils, take it off the heat and sift in the flour. Stir in well then return to the heat to cook, stirring all the time. When it comes away from the sides and forms a smooth ball, take off the heat and remove to a big bowl. Add an egg and beat well until it forms a smooth ball again. Add another egg and beat hard again. Repeat again with the other two eggs - by this time it should be a smooth thick paste. Transfer to the  piping bag and pipe small tall rounds on the sheet - they should be about an inch wide and an inch high with about the same gap in between. Put into the oven and bake for 10 minutes, then turn down to 350F/180C and bake for a further 15-20 minutes until golden and puffed. Remove to a wire rack to cool.


To assemble:
300ml double cream
75g white chocolate
75g dark chocolate

Lightly whip the cream until it holds fairly stiff peaks. Transfer to a piping bag. Nose a little hole in the bun and fill with cream. Continue until you have filled all the buns. Melt the white ad dark chocolate in different bowls - you may find this easier to do in batches as you go. Taking the mould, start placing the buns, dipped on the sides in white chocolate, around the edges. Fill in the centre with buns dipped in dark chocolate. Repeat with the next layer, also dipping/spreading the bottoms of each bun in chocolate. Fill until you have used all but the top layer worth of buns, then tip any remaining dark chocolate over the middle. Top with buns stuck together with white chocolate.  Decorate with chocolate ribbons, if using.  Alternatively, do not use a mould and simply mound the buns with some of the chocolate.