Eclair pyramid. Video recipe for making Croquembush

Ingredients for making Croquembush:

Cooking choux pastry for profiteroles (eclairs). Combine water in a small saucepan and butter, send to the fire and bring to a boil.
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When the mass boils, remove from heat and add flour. Stir vigorously until you get homogeneous dough without lumps.
Beat the eggs at the maximum speed of the mixer and add the hot custard dough one tablespoon at a time.
We transfer the finished custard dough into a pastry bag and place it on a lined baking sheet. parchment paper small round cakes, as in the photo.
Bake in the oven preheated to 190 degrees for 20 minutes.
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We take out the finished profiteroles and let them cool completely.
While the profiteroles are cooling, we are preparing butter cream. Beat the soft butter at the maximum speed of the mixer until it turns white, then add in a tablespoon caramel sauce. We transfer the finished cream into a pastry bag.
We make holes in the cooled profiteroles with a knife.
And fill each cake with cream using a pastry bag.
Cooking caramel. To do this, over low heat, without interfering, melt the sugar until all the sugar grains are melted.
We collect the cake. We coat the base with hot caramel and quickly, until it is frozen, spread the profiteroles in the base of the cake.
We entangle them with caramel threads. Caramel stretches well when it cools a little. If it is already too frozen, then it can be reheated over low heat.
In the same way, we collect the entire Croquembush cake and entangle it with caramel threads. You can choose the height of the cake as you wish. Croquembush can also be additionally decorated with fruits or sugar flowers.
French dessert Croquembush can be served to the festive table!

Served at weddings, baptisms and first communion. However, we consider that confectionery miracle The French serve only at the New Year's table. I can assure you - you are a little mistaken.

Yes, indeed, the shape of the croquembush dessert resembles Christmas tree, but is it really possible to wait a whole year until such a delicious culinary delicacy appears on the table ?! France disagrees!

Sroquembouche (or rather - croque en bouche) - literally translated from French means "(something) crunches in the mouth" ... And all - thanks to the most delicate profiteroles, which are the basis of dessert and are baked from choux pastry shu, which is used for eclairs, Saint-Honoré cake, salambo, gougère appetizers.

Balls (or profiteroles) of shu dough are filled with anglaise cream, folded into a slide, glued to each other with melted caramel and served. Sometimes the dessert is decorated with small French almond meringue pasta, or whipped cream, ganache is used as a filling. Croquembush can be topped with candied almond flakes, edible flowers from marzipan. It all depends on your imagination.

Croquembush dessert history

The invention of French decoration holiday table- Croquembouche is attributed to Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the first representatives of high french cuisine, who included it in 1815 in the cookbook "Royal Parisian cuisine" ("Le Pâtissier royal parisien"). Even earlier, this dessert was commemorated in 1806 in culinary encyclopedia Alexandra Viard (Alexandre Viard "s) - "Le Cuisinier Impérial" ("Imperial cuisine") and in the book of the first Parisian restaurateur Antoine Beauvilliers, who also brought the recipe to "L" Art du Cuisinier "(" Culinary art ") in 1815.

In the culinary encyclopedia of Wiard and others, earlier cookbooks Croquembush was included in the list of desserts. At that time they were called complex dishes, they were both salty and sweet, served during the opening of large banquets and grandiose feasts.

In popular culture, on March 6, 2009, graduates of the State Institute of Hotel Management and Catering in Pune, India, they built the world's largest croquembush - its height was 4.5 m!

Croquembush ingredients

Shu dough

water - 375 ml
butter - 150 g
flour - 175 g
eggs - 5 pcs.

Cream Angles

milk - 600 ml
vanillin
egg yolks - 6 pcs.
sugar - 75 g
flour - 65 g

Croquembush recipe

Shu dough profiteroles

Preheat the oven to 200° C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Prepare the shu dough - pour water into large saucepan and add oil. Bring the mixture to a boil and quickly add all the flour, stirring the mixture thoroughly so that the flour boils and does not form lumps. Remove the pan from the heat and continue stirring vigorously until the dough has cooled and is firm.

Beat the eggs with a whisk, add a little to chilled dough Shu. Mix everything thoroughly until homogeneous mass. Transfer the resulting shu dough into a pastry bag and deposit the profiteroles (the diameter of the cone for jigging is 5 mm). For a large croquembush, you need to deposit and bake 75 profiteroles - this will require 3 baking sheets.

When depositing, it is necessary to leave some distance between the blanks, since profiteroles will increase in size during baking. Before baking, smooth each profiterole with a wet finger or a wet brush so that no scallops from the pastry syringe remain on its surface.

Bake profiteroles for 20 minutes, until golden brown. Remove from oven and pierce the base of each profiterole with the tip of a knife to release the steam. Put in the oven for another 3 minutes. Then take it out of the oven and let it cool down.

Cream anglaise

In fact, this is a well-known custard. If you don't like this, you can fill the profiteroles with whipped cream.

For the crème anglaise, pour the milk into a saucepan, flavor with vanilla, and bring to a boil over low heat. In a separate bowl beat egg yolks, sugar and flour until pale cream. Pour the hot milk into the mixture of eggs, sugar and flour, stirring quickly. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and simmer for 4-5 minutes, stirring until the mixture thickens.

Strain ready cream anglaise through a fine sieve, cool. Place in a pastry bag and fill each profiterole with it through the hole in the bottom.

To assemble croquembush, you will need a cone made of paper or other food material, ready-made hot caramel.

For caramel, you need to take 300 g of sugar and 225 ml of water. Dissolve sugar in water sugar syrup to a boil, then - boil the caramel to + 154 ° C. As soon as this temperature is reached, dip the pan for a few seconds in cold water with the bottom so that the temperature of the caramel does not rise further by inertia.

Dip one side of each profiterole into the caramel and arrange around the prepared cone. If the caramel begins to harden during use, it can be gently reheated over a fire.

After assembly, the croquembush must cool for at least 30 minutes. Garnish the finished, assembled croquembush with thin threads of caramel, edible flowers from marzipan mass, sprinkle with candied almond flakes.

Many people associate this cake with the New Year or a wedding celebration and simply amazes with its grandeur and sophistication. Particularly surprising is the fact that it was invented quite by accident, as a way to dispose of shapeless pastries. We offer to cook a delicious, crispy and sophisticated cake "Croquembush". A recipe with a photo, or rather, as many as three cooking options are presented in our article. But first, it’s worth learning more about the history of the creation of this traditional French pastry.

Cake with history

The name of the French confectioner who invented this famous cake has not survived to this day. It is only known that he was put in charge of preparing the wedding cake for the English king Charles II and the Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza in 1662. When the Frenchman arrived in London, he was struck by the carelessness with which local confectioners collected birthday cake. Shapeless stuffed pies were laid out inaccurately and spoiled appearance dessert in general.

The French confectioner dismantled the previously prepared cake, and laid out the small pies in the form of a long cone and fastened them together with caramel. The confectioner called his work "Crockembusch". The recipe was so successful that it quickly became a wedding cake.

Later it was improved: instead of pies, profiteroles were used to create a cone, the cream acquired a more airy consistency, nuts, grated chocolate, and candied fruits were added additionally.

In our article, we will offer three options for preparing the famous French cake.

"Crockembusch": a recipe with a photo step by step from Lisa Glinskaya

"Croquembush" is an exquisite French cake that used to be baked exclusively for kings. But today, any housewife can cook it in her kitchen, following a simple recipe.

The step-by-step recipe for "Crockembusch" involves the following steps in sequence:

Baking small profiteroles from choux pastry. Cooking vanilla custard. Cooking caramel and assembling a cake in the shape of a cone.

Let's take a closer look at each point of our recipe.

Step 1. Preparing profiteroles

Profiterole dough consists of the following ingredients:

125 ml of milk and water; 25 g of sugar; 2 g of salt; 100 g of butter; 150 g of flour; 4-5 eggs.

The sequence of preparation of the dough:

Milk with water is poured into a saucepan, sugar, salt and butter, cut into small pieces, are added. The contents of the saucepan are brought to a boil over medium heat. After boiling the creamy milk mass, sifted flour is poured into it. Then the saucepan is quickly removed from the heat, and the mass, with constant stirring, turns into a soft custard dough. After that, the stewpan must be returned to the stove and evaporated excess moisture from the dough for 30 seconds so that the profiteroles turn hollow inside during baking. Eggs are added one by one to the custard dough. They may need 4 or 5 pieces, depending on how elastic and soft it will be. If you add all the eggs at once, the dough may be too liquid. Profiteroles are deposited on a baking sheet using a pastry bag or a tablespoon. From the specified amount of ingredients, 25-30 products are obtained. Profiteroles are baked for 20 minutes at a temperature of 190 degrees and another 10 minutes at 160 degrees.

Step 2 Custard

The preparation of custard dough for a cake occurs in the following sequence:

Egg yolks (4 pcs.) Are pounded with sugar (100 g) until white. Milk (500 ml) is poured into a saucepan and warms up well. It is important to make sure that it does not boil. 30 g of corn starch and the same amount of flour are added to the yolks. A third of the heated milk is poured into the bowl with the yolk mass. The mixture is well mixed until the lumps are completely dissolved. The yolk mixture is poured into a saucepan to the remaining milk. The saucepan goes to the stove. With constant stirring, the cream is brought to a thick consistency. 20 g of butter is added to the hot cream. The finished cream is covered with a film and sent to the refrigerator for 1 hour.

Step 3. Assembling the Cake

The assembly of stuffed profiteroles in the shape of a cone begins with the preparation of caramel. To do this, 200 g of sugar is poured into a saucepan with 50 ml of water. Bring the contents of the saucepan to a boil over high heat, then reduce the temperature and continue to cook the syrup until tender. After that, you need to form "Crockembusch".

The recipe for assembling the cake is to dip the filled profiteroles in caramel and lay them out in a circle in the shape of a cone. At the end of cooking, the cake is decorated with caramel threads.

New Year's "Croquembush": recipe with photo

"Crockembusch" for New Year's table prepared on the basis of sand and custard dough:

"Croquembush" in chocolate glaze

Beautiful cake with rich chocolate flavor can be prepared according to the following recipe:

heavy cream

chocolate icing

When preparing the dough, cream and assembling the cake, you should adhere to the following secrets:

In addition to water, milk should also be added to the dough. Thanks to this ingredient, a golden crust forms on the profiteroles during baking. To make the dough shiny and uniform, eggs should be introduced one at a time. Profiteroles are planted on a baking sheet at a distance of at least 3 cm from each other so that they do not stick together during baking. Cover the finished custard with a film so that it is firmly attached to the surface. Otherwise, a crust will form on the surface, which will make the cream heterogeneous, which will negatively affect the taste of the Croquembush dessert. The cake recipe necessarily includes caramel preparation. When pouring sugar into water, it is important to ensure that it does not get on the walls of the saucepan. Otherwise, hard crystals will form.

Cake "Croquembush" is always a holiday! Surprise your family and friends delicious dessert handmade!

Friends, I would like to say a few more words about my impressions of the cake, if I may))
I really liked the caramel version of Crockembusch. Until I tried it, I would never have thought that crispy caramel can be so harmoniously combined with delicate custard and "shu" cakes ... let's call it a game of textures and tastes;)
I give the proportion for custards and cream a little more than is required by the recipe - it is better to have a few cakes left unused than not enough.
I sincerely thank Lyudmila for helping me translate the name of the recipe into French :)
So, meet: "Piece montee en choux a la pistache"
Bon appetit! :))

Croquembush is a kind of French Christmas tree (pyramid) made of custard cakes, and in order to assemble such a Christmas tree, we need a cone shape. The cone can be easily made from thick paper.
On the sheet, draw a quarter circle, with a radius of 30 cm.

In order for the segment to turn out to be even without a compass, you can take a thread (string), wrap a pencil around it, clamp one end of the string in the center of the circle, and draw a circle with a pencil.

Cut out the resulting segment and roll it into a cone, connecting the straight sides together.
Glue the edges with masking tape or wide transparent tape.
At the cone, cut off the top about 2 cm from the top (to make it easier to lay the last cake).
Wrap the cone with foil or cling film.

Fill ready dough a pastry bag with a round nozzle and deposit in small slides on a baking sheet covered with parchment, at a distance of about 3 cm from each other (considering that the cakes increase in volume).

"Tails" on the deposited dough can be smoothed out with a finger dipped in water.

Preheat the oven to 190 ° C, fix the door with a wooden spoon so that it is slightly ajar, and bake the cakes for about 30 minutes.
Ready "shu" take out of the oven and cool.

Custard cakes (without cream) can be put in a bag or tightly closed container and stored at room temperature for 12 hours, but it is better to use fresh cakes.

cook pistachio custard.
Pictured are the ingredients for pistachio custard.

Pour milk (600 ml) into a saucepan (about 3 liters in volume) and bring almost to a boil.
In a large bowl, put the yolks (150 g), add sugar (140 g) and corn starch(60 g).

Blend everything with a whisk until smooth.

Pour hot milk into a bowl with yolks in a thin stream, while whisking vigorously with a whisk.

Pour the yolk mixture with milk back into the saucepan.

Cook the cream over low to medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until it begins to thicken.
As soon as the cream begins to thicken, remove the pan from the heat and continue to intensively stir the cream with a whisk outside the heat (so that the cream is well brewed and no lumps form).
Then return the pan to the stove and continue cooking until the cream boils.
At the first sign of boiling, note the time, and cook the cream, stirring constantly with a whisk, for 30 seconds.

Transfer the cream to a clean bowl, tighten with cling film so that it fits snugly on the surface of the cream and cool to 50 ° C.
Add butter (60 g) to the cream.

Cream, constantly stirring with a whisk, cool to room temperature in a cold water bath (for this, a saucepan with cream can be placed in a sink with cold water making sure that no water gets into the cream).

Advice. The cooled custard can be tightened with cling film so that it fits snugly on the surface of the cream, and put in the refrigerator.
To complete the preparation of the cream, you need to drive softened butter into it. Therefore, before stuffing the eclairs with cream, I recommend that you take the cream out of the refrigerator in advance, let it warm up to room temperature, and then beat in the butter along with the pistachio paste (read the recipe below).

In a clean bowl, beat softened butter until fluffy (beat for about 3-4 minutes).

Add pistachio paste.

And beat together with butter until fluffy.

Add the custard in small portions, constantly beating at medium speed of the mixer. You can add a couple of drops of green food coloring(if you add pistachio paste to the cream).

Beat the custard well until fluffy and smooth.

Tip 1. Custard can be prepared without adding pistachio paste (if it is not possible to buy it or cook it yourself). If necessary, I can give a recipe for pistachio paste a little later, in the near future, unfortunately, I will not have time to do this.

Tip 2. The custard here is slightly sweet. I give the proportions of sugar for the cream, taking into account the fact that croquembush is fastened with caramel and, in combination with custard, caramel gives enough sweetness. If you fasten the cake with melted white chocolate - it is also quite sweet, you can leave the same amount of sugar as in the recipe. And if you fasten the cakes with dark chocolate, you can add more sugar to the cream, according to your taste.

cook caramel.
Pour sugar into a small thick-bottomed saucepan and pour a little water, literally, to moisten the sugar.

Next to the stove, put a cup of cold water and put a silicone brush.
Heat the sugar over high heat without stirring (you can only stir until the syrup boils).
Periodically wash the sides of the pan dipped in cold water brush from adhering sugar crystals. This is done so that the sugar does not caramelize - do not neglect this nuance.
Boil the caramel until light amber in color (do not overcook, because the caramel heats up very quickly, it is better to remove the pan from the heat a little earlier than to overcook).

Remove the pan from the heat and, preferably, immediately place it on a marble surface to stop the heating.

Tip 1. I advise you to collect caramel cake only more or less experienced hostesses, while not being distracted by anything, but focusing on the process. Cooking caramel is NOT difficult, but it requires the utmost attention to yourself, otherwise, God forbid, you can seriously burn yourself. Therefore, before starting work, evaluate your strengths objectively: are you experienced enough in the kitchen, will household members interfere with your cooking, and do you have everything you need in stock.

Tip 2. Another nuance when working with caramel is that it hardens very quickly. Of course, it can be heated, but this can be done, perhaps, 1 time, and if you try to heat it again, the caramel will simply become burnt caramel. Therefore, from experience, I can suggest preparing caramel in small portions (for example, from 100 g of sugar) and also, stock up on 2-3 saucepans and, in turn, use them to make caramel.

Tip 3. During cooking, sugar can caramelize and this can also be a problem. Firstly, the likelihood of caramelization depends on the quality of sugar (I had this: two packs of sugar of different brands - caramel is cooked just perfectly from one pack, subject to elementary conditions, there is not even a hint of crystallization and I immediately start cooking caramel from the second pack ( another manufacturer) - it begins to crystallize almost at the very beginning of cooking, it is much harder to work with such sugar - I can hardly cope with it). By the way, I think that glucose syrup should help to cope with the problem of crystallization and the rapid solidification of caramel. And although I have it available, I decided not to add it for the sake of the purity of the experiment (after all, not every one of you will have glucose syrup). Also, for the sake of the same experiment, I added a little crystalline caramel to a serving of caramel citric acid- the consistency turned out to be wonderful, the caramel did not solidify so quickly. It could be reheated several times, but the taste is ... to put it mildly, unpleasant. I don't recommend adding lemon.
But you can try to add a little freshly squeezed lemon juice at the end of cooking - it is possible that with lemon juice caramel will be tastier than with lemon. Better yet, find glucose syrup or try to cook it yourself (recipe invert syrup is on the site). Or try replacing it with honey. All information about the use of lemon juice, glucose syrup, and its substitutes, rather theoretical, in practice, until there was time to experiment - I share with you, all of a sudden some of the tips will come in handy at the right time for some of you;)

Tip 4. When I spoiled a couple of portions of caramel (sugar from the second pack) and the result did not please me, I did it easier - I prepared DRY CARAMEL - for making dry caramel, the quality of sugar is not of such fundamental importance and to some extent, it is even easier to cook. For dry caramel, pour sugar into a thick-bottomed saucepan and put the saucepan on a strong (!) fire. Please note that the heating should be exactly strong or medium-strong. As soon as they put the saucepan with sugar on the fire, immediately begin to intensively stir the sugar with a spoon on a long handle (so that it is not so hot on the hands). From the intense heat, the sugar will begin to melt quickly, turning into caramel. The main thing is to stir vigorously all the time. I want to note that I tried to cook dry caramel earlier without stirring, as many recipes recommend, but, unfortunately, the sugar caramelized not completely, but in patches: it burned here, it didn’t start to melt and also began to crystallize. And with constant stirring, sugar completely turns into caramel - this result seems more stable to me, and I give my preference to it. Just don’t be scared: at the beginning of heating and stirring, the sugar will begin to gather into lumps, but literally, in no more than half a minute or a minute, it will begin to turn into a beautiful amber caramel ... do not overdo it on the fire! ;)

Spread a sheet of parchment on the table and grease it well. vegetable oil without smell.
In the hot, freshly made caramel, dip the top of each cake and place the caramel side down on the buttered parchment.
Thus, dip all custard semi-finished products in caramel. Prepare a fresh batch of caramel.
Gently (!) Dip each custard into caramel with the side that will be in contact with the other custard.

In order not to burn yourself, try sticking custard balls on a wooden skewer.

And put on a dish around the cone.

Thus, collect the entire croquembush.

Tip 1. When the croquembush is assembled, it remains to solve the issue of its storage. You should not put it in the refrigerator, because. from high humidity, the caramel will begin to melt and the structure may collapse (only croquembush sealed with chocolate can be placed in the refrigerator or on the balcony). Also, if it is rainy outside and there is high humidity in the room, it is better not to cook croquembush with caramel, but to stop at the chocolate version. And for storing caramel croquembush, I see only one option: gently wrap the cake in several layers food film and leave in a cool room until the evening, maximum until the next day (but a day is already a long time: there is no guarantee that the cream will last so long and the cream will not deteriorate if the room is not cool enough). Before serving, remove the cake from the cling film and glue some cakes that may have begun to fall off on a fresh portion of caramel. For these purposes, it is desirable to have a certain amount of spare "shu" so that in case of marriage it is possible to replace them with whole ones.
You can, of course, fill the "shu" with cream in advance, store them in the refrigerator, and collect the cake directly on the day of serving - but this option is for those who have free time to mess around with the cake on the day of the holiday ... I think that not many it is.

Tip 2. In many French recipes, croquembush is recommended to be removed from the cone. I wouldn't recommend doing this. Given its unreliable caramel construction, caramel can fail at the most unexpected moment - even if the cake is also held by a cone. What to do with it, with this capricious caramel... :)

Before serving, the cake can be decorated with caramel threads. To do this, you need to cook a portion of caramel, dip a fork into it, wait until the caramel begins to drain in a thin stream, then a thin stretching thread, and start wrapping the cake with the resulting caramel threads. Caramel threads look very elegant.
When serving, the cake is disassembled into individual cakes, starting from the top.

Bon appetit and Happy New Year! :)))

Bake the profiteroles. Fold a large sheet of paper in half, draw along the fold line with your thumb to make a kind of groove. Unfold the sheet and sift flour on it. Put the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan, pour in 500 ml of water and heat over low heat until the butter melts.

Pour the flour from the paper into the pan. Beat until the mixture turns into a smooth, buttery ball. Remove from heat and let cool, 5 minutes, transfer to a large bowl.

Beat 2 eggs well. Slowly pour into the flour mixture, whisking constantly. Also add 4 more eggs. Continue beating until you get a smooth, glossy paste.

Preheat oven to 200°C. Grease and line 3 baking sheets with parchment. Choux pastry can be squeezed onto baking sheets from a pastry bag or spread with a spoon. Mugs should be approximately 2.5–3 cm in diameter and spaced 3–3.5 cm apart. You should get about 30 pieces on each baking sheet. Bake 25 min.

Remove the profiteroles from the oven, pierce each with a wooden stick or knife to release the steam. Return to the oven for another 5 minutes to dry out the buns. Place on wire rack and let cool completely.

Prepare cream. Remove the zest from the lemon with a grater, squeeze the juice out of the pulp. Beat the yolks until a thick foam. Add sugar, flour, lemon peel and juice.

Bring the milk to a boil, add the egg-milk mixture and mix thoroughly. Cook over low heat, stirring until the mixture thickens. Pour in the liqueur, remove from heat and let cool.

Transfer the cream to a pastry bag and fill the profiteroles with it.

Make a cone as shown in the picture. Take a sheet of cardboard. Make marks in the middle on its long and two short sides. Draw two straight lines connecting the marks on the short sides with the mark on the long side. Measure their length. From the mark on the long side of the cardboard, draw several rays of the desired length and connect all the extreme points with an arc. Cut out the resulting shape. Using adhesive tape, connect the straight sides of the figure so that you get a cone.