Daring Bakers' Pièce Montée (Croquembouche)

The May 2010 Daring Bakers' challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montee, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump's Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

This is the first Daring Bakers' challenge that I participated in since I've joined them (I didn't like the previous two challenges) and it's also the first one I was actually excited to make. Even though it sounded very complicated, I made it the first weekend after the recipe was revealed. It wasn't that difficult to make. I have never heard about Croquembouche before, but I know the taste of choux pastry because I like profiteroles. The options for decorating the croquembouche were spun sugar and chocolate glaze. I, of course, chose chocolate, because I'm quite new to the baking world and I didn't want a disaster to happen. The biggest problem I had was that the bags which I used to pipe the batter kept ripping apart. But I kept trying with more bags and less pressure and I finally made it. Did I mention the dough is really sticky? Yeah, it was fun getting it from one bag to another...lol.

Overall, it was a good desert, but too much for three people to eat in one day. I assembled my piece montee with only half of the choux, and left the rest to be filled the next day.

Pate a Choux (makes about 28)

3/4 cup (175 ml) water
6 tbsp (85 g) unsalted butter
1/4 tsp salt
1 tbsp sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 large eggs

For the egg wash: 1 egg and a pinch of salt

1. Preheat oven to 425° F (220° C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. Combine water, butter, salt and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat. Bring to a boil and stir occasionally. At boil, remove from heat and sift in the flour, stirring to combine completely.
3. Return to heat and cook, stirring constantly until the batter dries slightly and begins to pull away from the sides of the pan.
4. Transfer to a bowl and stir with a wooden spoon 1 minute to cool slightly.
5. Add 1 egg. The batter will appear loose and shiny.
6. As you stir, the batter will become dry-looking like lightly buttered mashed potatoes. It is at this point that you will add in the next egg. Repeat until you have incorporated all the eggs.
7. Transfer batter to a pastry bag fitted with a large open tip. Pipe choux about 1 inch apart in the baking sheets. Choux should be about 1 inch high and about 1 inch wide.
8. Using a clean finger dipped in hot water, gently press down on any tips that have formed on the top of choux when piping. You want them to retain their ball shape, but be smoothly curved on top.
9. Brush with egg wash (1 egg lightly beaten with a pinch of salt).
10. Bake the choux until well-puffed and turning lightly golden in color, about 10 minutes. Lower the temperature to 350° F (180° C) and continue baking until well-colored and dry, about 20 minutes more. Remove to a rack and cool.

Chocolate Creme Patissiere (half batch)

1 cup (225 ml) whole milk

2 tbsp cornstarch

6 tbsp (100 g) sugar

1 large egg

2 large egg yolks

2 tbsp (30 g) unsalted butter

1 tsp vanilla extract

1. Dissolve cornstarch in 1/4 cup of milk. Combine the remaining milk with the sugar in a saucepan; bring to boil, remove from heat.
2. Beat the whole egg, then the yolks into the cornstarch mixture. Pour 1/3 of boiling milk into the egg mixture, whisking constantly so that the eggs do not begin to cook.
3. Return the remaining milk to boil. Pour in the hot egg mixture in a stream, continuing whisking.
4. Bring 1/4 cup (60 ml) milk to a boil in a small pan; remove from heat and add in 3 ounces (90 g) semisweet chocolate, finely chopped, and mix until smooth. 
5. Continue whisking the egg mixture (this is important - you do not want the eggs to solidify/cook) until the cream thickens and comes to a boil. Remove from heat and beat in the butter, vanilla and the chocolate mixture.
6. Pour cream into a stainless steel/ceramic bowl. Press plastic wrap firmly against the surface. Chill immediately and until ready to use.

Chocolate Glaze

8 ounces (200 g) finely chopped chocolate

Melt chocolate in a microwave or a double boiler. Stir at regular intervals to avoid burning. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford. Use immediately.

Assembly

You may want to lay out your unfilled, unglazed choux in a practice design to get a feel for how to assemble the final dessert. For example, if making a conical shape, trace a circle (no bigger than 8 inches) on a piece of parchment to use as a pattern. Then take some of the larger choux and assemble them in the circle for the bottom layer. Practice seeing which pieces fit together best. 

Once you are ready to assemble your piece montee, dip the top of each choux in your glaze and start assembling on your cake board/plate/sheet. Continue dipping and adding choux in levels using the glaze to hold them together as you build up. (you might want to use toothpicks to hold them in place - I didn't need them).

When you have finished the design of your piece montee, you may drizzle with remaining glaze or use ribbons, sugar cookie cut-outs, almonds, flowers etc. to decorate.

Look: 3/5
Taste: 4/5
Approximate cost: 5 €

Chocolate Feather Bed

This is my first cake recipe from Rose's Heavenly Cakes. You can find it here. All the recipes in this book are really detailed and complicated, and this one was too.

You'll need 12 eggs to make this cake. I only used 6 and made it half size. That's why it didn't come out as pretty as the picture in the book, because I had too little material to work with. It was hard getting the cake off the parchment paper, so I lost a lot of it in the process (and the parchment paper does not PEEL off!). But I seriously can't bring myself to use 12 eggs on a single cake. It was quite small, but very airy and chocolate-y.

The taste gets better the next day and I thought it tasted almost like my favorite chocolate cake from a hotel in my hometown. I haven't decided if I'm ever going to make it again, because there are so many more recipes to try out. This one really took me a lot of time to bake it, while the result wasn't that spectacular.

A few weeks ago I got the Happy 101 award from A Bit of Happy blog (thanks :D). I'm always so surprised when I get an award because I cannot believe that people are actually reading my blog.  So, now that I got it, I have to tell you 10 things that make me happy (even though it's that time of the year when NOTHING makes me happy...) and pass along the award to 10 bloggers. 

10 things that make me happy: 

• my cat
• baking a perfect cake
• eating cakes
• passing exams
• traveling
• being with my family
• watching my favorite shows (Grey's Anatomy <3)
• having free time, even if I don't know how to spend it
• going to the beach
• everything cute and tiny (especially cats.)

I'm passing this award on to:

• 17 and Baking
• Southern Domestic Goddess
• Bake in Paris
• Freely Living Life
• Heidi Bakes
• Spache the Spatula
• Simply Sugar and Gluten Free
• Not so Humble Pie
• Baking Monster
• Lick the Bowl Good

The rules are:

• copy and paste the award on your blog
• list who gave the award to you and use a link to her blog
• list 10 things that make you happy
• pass the award on to 10 other bloggers and visit their blog to let them know!

Another Chocolate Cake

I love 8-inch cakes. They look so cute and tiny, but because they are so small, when everyone gets their piece, there's not much left for me to eat and get fat. I like that. And because the cakes get eaten so quickly, no one gets tired of their tastes and they all want more. I have to thank Nigella Lawson for all this, because the main reason I bought (well, requested it for Valentine's day :D) the 8-inch pan was because of her Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake. And I haven't looked back since.

Every time I open the Martha Stewart Food page, there is the ''Luscious Layer Cakes'' slideshow right before my eyes. Every time. But, since I don't really want to eat one stick of butter every day, I didn't choose a ''luscious layer cake'' after all, but I went through the chocolate cakes slideshow. And there I found this tiny chocolate cake, which, as the name already tells you, is really easy to make. Nom nom.

Easy Chocolate Cake (from Martha Stewart)

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, plus more for pan
3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder, plus more for pan
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup sugar
3 large eggs
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup sour cream

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees (175 C). Butter an 8-inch round cake pan; line bottom with wax paper. Butter paper, dust with cocoa powder, tapping out excess; set aside.
2. In a medium bowl, sift together cocoa, flour, baking powder and salt, set aside. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time, then beat in vanilla. Reduce speed to low. Add flour mixture alternating with sour cream, starting and ending with the flour mixture.
3. Spread batter into prepared pan. Tap pan firmly on countertop several times to force out large air bubbles. Bake until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove from oven. Cool 10 minutes in pan, then invert onto a wire rack to cool completely (bottom side up). Set rack over a rimmed baking sheet. Pour glaze over, spread gently to coat entirely. Let stand until set. Garnish with chocolate shavings. Serve with whipped cream.

Chocolate glaze

4 ounces coarsely chopped semisweet chocolate

1/2 cup heavy cream

Place chocolate in a medium bowl. In a small saucepan, bring cream to a boil. Pour over chocolate; whisk until smooth. Let cool until thick yet pourable, 2 to 3 minutes.

Ah, Martha. Another perfect recipe. Nom. This cake tastes fantastic! It's really dense and chocolate-y. Of course, as usual, my glaze wasn't actually a glaze, more like a spread. It didn't look as flawless as the cake in the picture, so I covered it in nonpareils. And, when I cut it, I realized that I forgot to tap the pan on the counter, so there were some air bubbles inside the cake. But still, the taste was perfect, not too sweet, a bit of bitterness and the nonpareils on top just a bit sweeter... ahh, I want more of it. NOW.

Look: 5/5
Taste: 5/5
Approximate cost: 4 €