Crocembouche french profitrolet cake

12 servings
5 hours

First, to make Crocembouche cake, prepare a cone shape *.

Make the custard cakes * *.

To do this, cut the oil into a small cube and transfer it to a saute pan with a volume of 1. 5-2 liters.

Add the milk, water and a pinch of salt.

Place the saucepan over the heat and bring the contents to a boil. At the same time, butter should completely melt.

Be sure to sift the flour, this is important, since if there are lumps in the flour, then it will be difficult to break them during brewing.

And without removing the saucepan from the heat, add all the flour immediately.

Stirring the mass actively with a wooden spoon or spatula, cook the dough for 1-2 minutes over a low heat. During this time, the dough should gather in a single mass and turn into a smooth lump, and a thin flour coating should form at the bottom of the pan.

Transfer the brewed portion of the dough to a bowl and leave to cool. To make the dough cool faster, I just spoon it for 4-5 minutes.

While the dough cools, break the eggs into a bowl and shake lightly with a fork. If your eggs are quite large, then you may need 7 eggs.

When the custard cools a little, start adding eggs in small portions. At the same time, mix the dough very thoroughly. Once the portion of eggs has fully intervened, you can add the next portion.

On the way out, you should have a very soft, shiny dough.

Fill the pastry bag with a round nozzle with the finished dough. If you do not have a bag, then take a regular dense bag and cut a corner from it or lay out the dough simply with two teaspoons. Cover the baking sheet with baking paper and use a bag to settle the dough in the form of small slides at a distance of 3-4 cm from each other. Try to plant the dough in small portions, literally the size of a quail egg.

Ponytails on the dough can be smoothed with a finger wetted in water.

Bake the profiterols in the preheated oven for 20 minutes at 200 C, after which the temperature is reduced to 160 C and bake them for another 15-20 minutes until a beautiful ruddy crust. By the way, it is very important: do not open the oven door for the first 20 minutes, otherwise profiterols may fall! Remove the finished profiteroles from the oven and leave to cool.

Make the custard * *.

Pour the milk into a saucepan, put on a heat and heat well, almost until boiling.

Meanwhile, combine the eggs, sugar and vanilla sugar in a bowl.

Whisk lightly. You may not achieve complete dissolution of sugar, it will disperse when you add hot milk.

Add flour to the egg mass (it also needs to be sifted) and mix thoroughly.

Pour hot milk into the obtained mixture in a thin stream, while constantly stirring with a whisk.

Pour the resulting mass back into the saucepan and put on a small heat.

With constant stirring, brew the mass until thick, smooth cream is obtained. To do this, just bring the cream to the boil - you will notice how bubbles will begin to appear on its surface and that's it, you can remove the cream from the heat. And also, the cream must be constantly mixed, do not leave it for a minute, otherwise it can burn and, in addition, lumps can form in it.

Pour the finished cream into a bowl and, stirring occasionally, leave it to cool for 10-15 minutes. By the way, if suddenly you still have lumps in the cream, then simply strain it through a sieve.

Stir the butter into the cooled cream.

Cover the finished cream with a film so that the film fits tightly to the surface of the cream and cool it well.

When you have profiteroles, cream and cone shape ready, you can start assembling the cake. Make the caramel * * *.

To do this, pour sugar into the center of the saute pan, add water to it. If sugar crystals hit the walls of the saucepan, then be sure to rinse them with a slightly damp brush.

Place the saucepan on a heat and melt the sugar to caramel when heated vigorously. Be careful, you can mix the mixture only until the moment of boiling. Also follow the color of caramel, do not burn it.

In hot, freshly cooked caramel, dip the hats of 30 * * * * profitrols and put them in hats on a sheet of parchment greased with a thin layer of vegetable oil, leave the profitroles in this form for 5 minutes so that the caramel freezes completely. It is not necessary to do this, but in this form the cake will turn out to be more elegant in appearance. Try to make the layer of caramel not very thick, so that it is convenient to eat profiterols.

This is such a beautiful caramel crust on cakes.

Fill a pastry bag with a narrow nozzle with cream and fill it with 60-70 small profiterols (30 pcs with caramel crust and 30 pcs without it).

Assemble the pyramid. To do this, if necessary, cook a fresh portion of caramel and gently dip the filled profiteroles on the side (on the side where they will come into contact with other cakes) and cover the whole cone with them, alternating cakes with and without caramel crust.

Cut the tip of the cone, so it will be more convenient to lay out the last cake. This is such a pretty Christmas tree.

Traditionally, Crocembouche is decorated with fresh or sweet flowers. I used sweet (sugar) roses. Sweet flowers can be glued with caramel or melted chocolate.

At the very end, we decorate the cake with caramel threads. Just keep in mind, you need to do this no more than 1-2 hours before serving, since caramel is very whimsical and these threads begin to melt over time. To make caramel threads, cook a new portion of caramel and let it cool a little, dip a fork or whisk into it and wait until the caramel begins to drain with a thin thread and start wrapping the cake with these strings.

Crocembouche cake made of profiterols is ready!

When served, the cake is not cut, but simply disassembled into cakes.

Enjoy your meal!