Of belated birthdays and…

Saturday, 25 Jul 09

GrabYourFork’s recent compilation of all Sydney foodblogs reminded me that thewayitcrumbles is a July baby! I’d totally forgotten that I’d created it on July 7th last year, and so blithely carried on in holiday mode. I have been baking and cooking AND taking photos though, so hopefully I’ll have a few to carry on during the semester.

This is one of the more spectacular things I’ve tried to ever make – Croquembouche! Masterchef inspired, of course. I’m somewhat disappointed that Poh didn’t win, because I felt she embodied the idea of a creative, innovative professional chef more than Julie, but c’est la vie – perhaps I’m biased because she’s Asian ;)

Literally meaning ‘crunch in the mouth’, the French wedding cake is a tower of profiteroles, filled with a creme patissiere, and coated and assembled using a caramel. Golden threads of sugar are then spun around the cake. It wasn’t quite as scary to make as I thought it would be, but then, I didn’t take on the towering cake of Masterchef since I didn’t have a cone, and my family is somewhat sugar phobic.

Vanilla bean paste and milk is heated to a boil, before being added slowly to an egg and sugar mixture, taking care to temper the eggs lest they curdle. The mixture is then brought to a boil, before the bowl is rapidly cooled in a larger bowl of iced water. Lots of whisking takes place at all stages of the process, otherwise, scrambled eggs may result.

When the mixture has cooled to 50 degrees Celcius, butter is then added to lend a silky luxurious mouthfeel, and the creme patissiere is covered and refrigerated.

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Unfortunately, trying to make choux pastry by myself meant no photographs of the process, as it required a great deal of attention. Essentially, butter, milk and sugar was brought to a boil, before flour was rapidly whisked in. The doughy mixture, resembling playdough, is then cooked in the pan until it dries up and is no longer too sticky – it’s hard to explain since I went by intuition.

Eggs are then beaten in one by one. This step was a little alarming, as the mixture appeared to split, but fear not, by the 6th egg, it had all come together into a silky warm dough, which was then piped into 4cm blobs. I really need to reclaim my piping set from Tim, I only had a disposable shell tip, which did give the choux pastry a pretty look admittedly.

One lesson learnt – don’t open the oven door until these things are completely golden. Otherwise they just slowly, subtly, almost invisibly shrink down…until when you next turn around, they look like they’ve been run over. Not that I’m talking from personal experience or anything. Ahem.

To make the caramel, water, sugar and a little bit of honey (you need to use an invert sugar to prevent crystallisation, so glucose will work too) are brought to hard crack on the stove and the choux pastry are filled with cream before being dipped into the caramel. If you’re going to be like a Masterchef contestant, by all means use your fingers and keep a bowl of ice water nearby to soothe any burns, but I didn’t, I used l337 chopstick skillz to dip. Use forks to vigourously create spun sugar strands around the stacks.

So happy belated birthday to TheWayItCrumbles – more birthdays coming up soon, so look forward to some more posts.

4 Comments

1. Awesome work! I’m too scared to attempt choux or creme patissiere!

   Comment by Reemski — July 25, 2009 @ 8:09 pm

2. Wow! That looks awesome! Great work! And Happy Birthday to the blog :)

   Comment by Betty — July 26, 2009 @ 5:38 pm

3. Congratulations on your first year of blogging! Your photos are always great and your culinary creations even more so – that croquembouche is very impressive!

   Comment by Belle@OohLook — July 27, 2009 @ 11:11 am

4. Yum, these look great. Impresssed you didn’t get any toffee burns (no MasterChef-style bandaged fingers? lol) and happy blog birthday!

   Comment by Helen (grabyourfork) — July 27, 2009 @ 3:27 pm

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