Croquembouche Recipe (Profiterole Tower)
I was watching the fashion documentary Dior and I on Netflix, and I was reminded of my own time spent in the fashion industry. When I tell people that I used to work in fashion but now work with food and make pastries like this easy croquembouche recipe, they’re often surprised. For me, however, the transition felt very natural and homogeneous.
In my old fashion job, art and creativity were always the basis of my work. When it comes to food, especially baked goods and pastries, I find the same to be true.
Whether I decide to decorate a simple saffron cake with a single pear, or build a croquembouche tower (a.k.a. a profiterole tower) as I’ve done here, I’m constantly trying to convey my perspective of design through food.
A croquembouche, also known as croque-en-bouche (literally meaning crunches in the mouth) and commonly misspelled as crockenbush (believe it or not!), is composed of small cream puffs piled high on top of each other in a cone shape, then decorated with spun sugar.
You’re also likely to spot a macaron croquembouche from time to time, but the cream puffs or profiteroles are the more traditional variation.
A croquembouche dessert is usually reserved for very special occasions, served as a croquembouche cake at weddings or just as a beautiful tower at a holiday party. The croquembouche tower looks very impressive and is honestly easier to create than some of the other holiday cakes or confectionaries you might see during this time of the year.
If you’ve wondered how to assemble a croquembouche, I’m here to tell you that it’s not as crazy as it looks. A croquembouche recipe definitely takes some time, but it’s not as challenging to actually assemble as you might think.
One thing that really helps when you’re carrying out a recipe like this is to use a steel croquembouche cone to help you. You can easily buy one online or make your own makeshift one at home. You can also just freestyle it, especially if you’re making a petit croquembouche like I did here.
I think it’s the spun sugar that really makes a croquembouche look as magical as it does anyways. For me, the croquembouche spun sugar is the most fun part of creating this dessert. I usually take my whisk and dip it in the prepared caramel sauce, then drape it this way and that way over the tower of pastries.
Doing this gives the tasty croquembouche the effect of looking like it has danced in a frenzy, leaving wispy twirls of sugar in its tracks.
The cream puffs are typically filled with classic pastry cream, something you’ll also find in éclairs or tarts, then stacked on top of each other using caramel sauce as the binding agent.
I like to use a decorating tip (like this) on my pastry bag to pipe out the mounds of choux onto the baking sheet because I love the look of the elegant ridges on the cream puffs.
Once the croquembouche has been adorned in spun sugar, the cream puffs are ready to be enjoyed, all with a nice little crunch from the caramel. The crispy element from the spun sugar really adds some variation to the dessert since cream puffs usually deliver a predominantly tender bite.
The twists and turns of the delicate sugar cage are unique to every baker and every individual experience in which a croquembouche is prepared; you don’t use any perfectly stenciled baking mats or tins to prepare the wisps of sugar. So, the fact that a croquembouche will never look the same as the next one is proof that food is just as much of an art as any other realm of design.
Croquembouche
A tower of delicious cream puffs filled with pastry cream and decorated with spun sugar.
Ingredients
for the pate a choux (pastry puffs)
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup unsalted butter
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs
for the pastry cream
- 1 cup whole milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 whole egg
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- 2 tbsp all-purpose flour
for the caramel
- 1 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup water
Instructions
- Start the dessert off by making the pastry cream first. Create the pastry cream by first warming the milk in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until it’s hot, but not boiling.
- Meanwhile, whisk the egg, egg yolk, and sugar together until thick and pale. Add the cornstarch and flour, and whisk again to combine. Pour 1/4 cup milk into the egg batter and whisk vigorously to combine. Slowly add the rest of the milk, continuing to whisk the mixture as you do.
- Pour the mixture back into the saucepan, and continue to heat this mixture over medium-low heat. Whisk the entire time, and after about 5 to 7 minutes, you should see the cream really thicken up into a pudding-like consistency.
- Take the cream off the heat. Add in the vanilla extract and whisk to combine. Place a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the pastry cream to prevent a filmy layer from forming. Refrigerate the pastry cream until chilled.
- Preheat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat.
- To create the pastry puffs, begin by heating the butter, water, sugar, and salt in a small saucepan over medium heat. Once the butter has melted and the mixture has come to a simmer, remove the saucepan from the heat.
- Add in the flour and stir with a wooden spoon. Move the saucepan back over to low heat and continue to stir the mixture until the flour is completely incorporated and the dough no longer sticks to the bottom or sides of the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and turn off the stove.
- Add in the eggs, stirring very well after each addition. You want to make sure each egg is mixed in well before adding another. The finished result should look like a thick paste.
- Transfer the pastry dough to a pastry bag fitted with a star tip or round tip, and pipe the dough into small 1 inch mounds onto the prepared baking sheet.
- Bake the pastry puffs for 10 minutes at 425°F, then without opening the oven door, lower the heat to 375°F and bake the puffs for another 5 to 8 minutes, until the puffs are completely golden.
- Turn the oven off and leave the oven door slightly open. Let the puffs rest in the turned off oven for about 10 minutes. Then remove and transfer them to a wire cooling rack to cool completely.
- Take a small cake board, or create a round 5 to 6 inch cardboard shape and line it with parchment paper. Temporarily set aside.
- Once the pastry puffs are cooled, fill a pastry bag with the chilled pastry cream. Poke the bottom of each pastry puff with your pastry tip to create a small hole. Insert the pastry cream into the puff through this hole. Repeat for all the pastry puffs.
- Create the caramel by adding the sugar and water to a heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium heat. Give the sugar and water an initial stir to combine the two together, but then don’t stir the mixture anymore after this point. Instead, give the caramel a a stir by giving the saucepan a brief swirl every now and then.
- Let the sugar and water boil until it begins turning a light amber color (about 6 to 8 minutes). Keep your eye on the mixture like a hawk, and don't let it get any darker than pale amber. You don't want it to be darker like traditional caramel sauce; this way the mixture will still crystallize when you drape it over the pastry tower.
- Dip the bottoms of the pastry puffs in the caramel, being very careful not to burn your fingers, and place the puffs in a circle on the prepared board. You’ll want to have a circle of 6 cream puffs. Then create another circle of cream puffs on top of this first ring, dipping the cream puffs in caramel first to get them to stick. Continue this until you create a sort of tree-shape or cone-shape with the cream puffs.
- If the caramel has somewhat hardened, briefly heat the caramel to loosen it up before using again. Take a whisk or fork and dip it in the caramel before draping the caramel over and around the tower of cream puffs. You can also splash some of the caramel onto a large sheet of parchment paper, and allow the sugar to harden for about 15 to 30 seconds before removing these strands/shards of sugar and carefully placing them around the tower of cream puffs.
- Refrigerate if serving the cream puffs later, otherwise serve immediately.
Nutrition Information:
Yield: 16 Serving Size: 16 ServingsAmount Per Serving: Calories: 85
I followed the recipe and things went pretty well. My cream puffs are pretty and they taste good. The entire display looks very nice. My only problem is that I dipped the bottoms of the puffs in the caramel before placing them to get them to stick, and they ended up sticking too much, so that when you pull a puff off the tower, it often removes half of the nearby puffs as well. When comparing with other croquembouche recipes, it seems like most don’t have you dip the bottoms of the puffs in caramel, but instead have you dip the tops. That way, presumably, the caramel hardens a bit more before you place a puff on top of it, so that they don’t stick together as much. I’m hoping I will have more success with that method.
Hi Phoebe! Sometimes if you cook the caramel a little too long, it can get too hard. It’s just the chemistry of the caramel losing its moisture the longer it cooks. The other thing I would try next time, whether you apply it on the top or bottom of the cream puffs, is to only dip a very small bit of the puff rather than a full top or bottom surface. This will allow a sticking point for the puffs but make it easier to separate them. 🙂
Ok, so the caramel would not be enough to hold them together? and I would have to use the sugar and water syrup in the recipe to hold them together?
I don’t want to stick them together with sugar so may I just use caramel? Like, the one with heavy cream.
Hi Crystal, sorry I’m not sure I understand what your question is. To assemble the cream puffs together in a tower, you’ll need the caramel recipe outlined in this post to stick them to each other. If you’re looking to just drizzle caramel sauce over them without adhering the cream puffs together, then you’ll want to use the ratio of ingredients for the salted caramel sauce found in this saint-honoré recipe, where I use sugar and heavy cream to make the caramel sauce.
Oh also, I followed your advice on hearing the sugar/water mixture again if it got thick and it ended up crystallizing. Was there something I did wrong?
It could just be that there were some sugar crystals that formed before your reheated, and when you went to reheat, that’s why they crystallized. Once there are sugar crystals in the caramel, you can’t really avoid crystallization. When you’re making the sauce, try to avoid doing any stirring or getting any additional water in the pan.
Hello! I tried your recipe, but I think that the flour ratio might be off. When I went to put it on the cooking sheet (the dough batter), it was too liquidy. So I tried to quickly fix it by adding more flour, but I wasn’t about sure about the exact amount I needed in it, so I had to guesstimate. And in the end, they rose slightly, but not like in the image. Maybe there was a typo? 🙂
Hi Grace! Thanks for your comment. So whenever people have an issue with the batter for pate a choux being too liquid-y, it’s usually because it wasn’t stirred enough over the stove to eliminate all the moisture. The ratios are correct for this recipe. What I recommend doing is stirring the dough over the heat for a good 5 minutes, then letting the dough hang out in the saucepan off the heat for 10 minutes. Then, fill your bag and pipe out the dough. Bake them according to the directions then when they are done, you can give each a little poke with a knife or skewer to help release some of the steam as they cool which will help them stay puffy. 🙂
Good to know! So quick question, when you say stir the dough until all the moisture, do you mean before adding the eggs or after? I assume after, but just wanna check. 🙂
It would be after you add the eggs. 🙂
Hello, do you happen to know if doubling or tripling the ingredients to make a larger batch will work effectively, or do you recommend making several single batches for better success?
Warm regards,
C
Hi Calliope! I have doubled the batch with successful results so I would recommend doing batches no larger than double the recipe. 🙂 Hope that helps <3
Thanks for your response, Beeta. I am excited to make this recipe for our Thanksgiving party. I may do two double batches. We’ll see how ambitious I am. I’ll let you know how it turns out. How long do you think the tower would be ok to sit out at room temperature after coming out of the fridge?
🙂 Calliope
Hi Calliope! I think the tower is okay for an hour or so outside of the fridge. Cream typically needs to be refrigerated, but I’ve served the pastry tower at dessert time and then left the tower out for people during dessert hour to go back and pick from without anyone falling ill or anything! :p