CROQUEMBOUCHE

This weekend, it was time. Time for croquembouche.

I had made about three batches of the pastry shells in a few previous weeks and froze them all in bags. On Friday night, all I had to do was make four batches of sand cookies, one batch of pastry shells, and four batches of pastry cream.

I wasn't up too late, although it did take me a little longer than I expected. This is partly because the quadrupled pastry cream recipe was about six or so quarts, meaning that it barely fit into my biggest pot - and that's without vigorously stirring it - so I had to do this elaborate dance to split it between my two big stock pots.

Oh, and if it didn't fit into my stock pots, you can guess it didn't fit into any of my bowls, so I improvised an extremely large bowl from the overturned cake pedestal lid. So sad that I do not have a picture of this.

But on the plus side, if you ever need someone to crack and separate four dozen eggs without breaking a single yolk, I am the woman for the job.

On Saturday morning, Dave and I got up early and began the task of (1) filling the pastry shells with the cream, (2) making the caramel, (3) dunking some cream puffs in caramel and assembling the croquembouche, (4) dunking the rest of the cream puffs in caramel and allowing to dry separately, (5) packing those cream puffs up in boxes with wax paper. We're talking about 200 or so cream puffs.

The croquembouche was much easier to assemble than I thought. But the caramel was just as difficult to make and work with as I remember. Dave was my sous-chef and was surprised to learn that all caramel is basically sugar and water, boiled to various degrees. Sometimes you add butter and whip it to keep it soft. But the caramel I was working with had a high ratio of sugar to water, meaning that pretty much whatever point you boil it to, it's going to harden when it cools. The only question is, how long do you have before it hardens?

I think I must have made about five batches of caramel that morning - the first one was a double batch that failed almost entirely. I managed to get the first row of cream puffs onto my plate, but that was about it.

The last three batches worked much more smoothly, but I made them separately and it was just kind of tedious. Plus we burned ourselves and got little caramel droplets all over the counter and floor. Oops.

I did finish the croquembouche on time, with extra caramel to drizzle down the sides to create a glossy sheen. I also had enough to make a little spun sugar, which I cracked and drizzled over the top and sides.

After everything came together, we transported it downtown to the reception restaurant. If I had worried about the croquembouche falling over, as it did to another food blogger, I needn't have. That thing was solid. No joke, I think you could have picked it up, turned it over, and shook it and it wouldn't have come off of my pedestal.

Look at that glistening beast. The dark stuff around it on the pedestal are Trader Joe's dark chocolate-covered espresso beans.

They displayed my cookies and the rest of the cream puffs in the bar area:

I'm happy to say that everything was a huge hit! I hadn't actually tried a completed puff until everyone else did, and honestly, I can definitely boast some bragging rights on this one. They were delicious.

I like to think that part of the deliciousness was due to my ingredients - Dave went to the Spice House for me and bought four vanilla beans, which I scraped and included in the pastry cream. I also improvised the cinnamon flavor of the cream, although the original recipe suggested only chocolate or coffee. Many of the eggs in the pastry shells were CSA eggs, one dozen of which I got for free. I also used high quality flour and didn't skimp on the butter.

But honestly, it was pretty awesome to walk through the grocery checkout with three of those 18-packs of eggs, plus flour, two bags of sugar, and one bag of powdered sugar. The checkout lady asked if I was making Christmas cookies. "Nope," I proudly said, "I'm making the desserts for my friend's wedding!"

I still can't believe I did it, but I'm glad I did. I'd make it again for an event, but hopefully a smaller one this time. Dave says he never wants to work with caramel again, so I guess I'm on my own on that part!