Croquembouche!

ALERT: This post does not contain anything healthy and is the opposite of almost everything I have heretofore posted. However, it does taste good!

I made this crazy dessert for my sister's bachelorette party. It consists of choquettes filled with pastry cream (cream puffs) stuck together with caramel.

The process started four days before the event when I made my first attempt at choquettes using a British recipe and converting all of the measurements. I had outfitted myself with some new pastry tips and was eager to try my hand at a new technique.

Butter and cream!

Unfortunately, my first attempt...

...was a failure.

These little flat disks were not about to fit any sort of pastry cream into their not-so-hollow bellies.

So...the next day...I tried again. With a recipe that had recognizable measuring units.

I took it a little easier with the eggs.

After squirting them out like this, I knocked the points down using a pastry brush dipped in an egg wash.

I put them in the oven with a prayer for success...

...and they turned out!

Beautiful little golden puffs!

Into the freezer they went...all 88 of them.

The day before the event, I made the cream. I started with a basic vanilla pastry cream, then added chocolate and instant espresso to half of it to create a mocha.

The day of, I recruited the other girls staying at my parents to help me assemble it, because we were very pressed for time. One of them filled all of the puffs with cream. Another made the cone that would support the puffs. We stuck it on the plate with some extra custard so it wouldn't slide.

We all worked on the tricky caramel. And then we dipped the puffs and stuck them in tiers onto the cone.

Got an arm in there...I didn't have much time to set up a photo.

For the recipe, click here. And google image croquembouche to see some huge ones!