🍮 Croquembouche

Name: Croquembouche
Total time: 150 min
Yield: 12
Cuisine: France
Ingredients: Choux pastry: 250 ml water, 100 g butter, 150 g flour, 4 eggs, pinch of salt; Pastry cream: 500 ml milk, 4 egg yolks, 100 g sugar, 40 g cornflour, 1 tsp vanilla; Caramel: 300 g sugar, 80 ml water

Origin: France

372kcal

per serving · 120 g

310kcal

per 100 g

6 gProtein5 g / 100 g

18 gFat15 g / 100 g

46 gCarbs38 g / 100 g

Croquembouche is a tall cone of small choux buns filled with vanilla pastry cream and stuck together with hard caramel. Strands of spun sugar are often wrapped around the tower. The buns are soft and creamy inside, while the caramel shell gives the crunch the name promises. It is a centrepiece at French weddings, christenings and celebrations, broken apart and shared at the table.

Diets

✓

Vegetarianno meat or fish in a typical recipe

✓

No pork

Not veganbecause of: choux pastry, custard, caramel

Contains glutenbecause of: choux pastry

Contains dairybecause of: custard, caramel

Not keto38 g carbs per 100 g

Allergens

Contains (in a typical recipe):

⚠ Gluten ⚠ Eggs ⚠ Milk

What it is made of

choux pastrycustardsugarcaramel

Recipe

12 servings150 min

Ingredients

Choux pastry: 250 ml water, 100 g butter, 150 g flour, 4 eggs, pinch of salt
Pastry cream: 500 ml milk, 4 egg yolks, 100 g sugar, 40 g cornflour, 1 tsp vanilla
Caramel: 300 g sugar, 80 ml water

Method

Make the pastry cream: heat the milk, whisk the yolks with the sugar, cornflour and vanilla, pour in the hot milk, return to the pan and stir until thick. Cool completely.
For the choux, boil the water, butter and salt, add the flour all at once and stir until the dough leaves the pan. Cool slightly, then beat in the eggs one by one.
Pipe about 40 small buns onto lined trays and bake at 200 °C for 25 minutes until puffed and golden. Cool.
Pierce each bun and pipe in the pastry cream.
Cook the sugar and water to an amber caramel. Dip the top of each bun in caramel and build a cone, sticking the buns together layer by layer.
Draw thin threads of the remaining caramel around the tower with a fork and serve within a few hours.

How to make it lighter

A croquembouche is meant for sharing: two or three buns make a sensible portion.
Fill the buns with a lighter cream made with semi-skimmed milk.
Skip the spun-sugar threads — they add sugar without much flavour.

History

The name comes from the French croque en bouche, 'crunches in the mouth'. The 19th-century chef Antonin Carême is often credited with popularising elaborate pastry centrepieces of this kind, and the choux tower became a traditional French celebration cake.

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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →