Daring Bakers May Challenge

The May 2010 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Cat of Little Miss Cupcake. Cat challenged everyone to make a piece montée, or croquembouche, based on recipes from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and Nick Malgieri.

Surprisingly, this month, I was terribly organised and managed to make a real head start on this challenge!  I had actually been playing with the idea of making a croquembouche for my mum's birthday this year as choux puffs top her list of favourite foods.  Anyways, as it would be, this challenge came along at an opportune time and so instead, I made it for mothers' day.

I have made choux before and find it quite easy to work with.  I love how they puff and become all fluffy fresh out of the oven!

The French have this totally correct, I wish I had the foresight to sprinkle a couple of these with some gruyere cheese and what a delicious snack they would've been!

Far too ambitious, my puffs we too big to make a small crouquembouche - but then we were too few people to eat a big one, so in the end, a rather out of proportion piece montee......

Decorated with edible stars and fondant flowers.  Filled with a delicious dulce de leche pastry creme.  All in all, not a bad morning's work!  The left over choux ran off with its good friend, the debonair Kennedy & Wilson couverture chocolate with 38% cocoa (in my opinion, the best chocolate available in Australia - sorry Callebaut & Valrhona) and a spinkling of hazelnut praline. *contented sigh*

 All filled with the same sinfully rich dulce de leche creme (google it if you dont know what it is)

Crunchy toffee, soft eggy choux pastry, complex silky caramel creme....yes, it was a very sweet afternoon!
Happy Mother's Day to my mum and all the selfless, tireless mothers out there, with the hardest job in the whole world!  Mum - thank you for being such an inspiration to me every day!

Thanks to Cat for picking such a wonderful challenge.  For recipes, check out Little Miss Cupcake and how the rest of the daring bakers faired this month!