Claire Saffitz Teaches Amateur How To Make Croquembouche | Dessert Person

that is not the right kind of spatula that's like for flipping pancakes hey everyone i'm claire welcome to my home kitchen today we're mixing it up a little bit and i am going to teach one of my favorite dessert people my brother-in-law nick how to make a croco boosh maybe the hardest recipe in all dessert person but it is nick's favorite he is quite the novice when it comes to baking oh i just did the opposite everything's leaning in on itself collapsing i love teaching people and empowering them to bake at home and hopefully i know i'm gonna have a croquembouche at the end we'll see what nick ends up with [Music] the rating is difficulty level five very challenging it's often served traditionally as a wedding cake in france it is a french confection and the name means crunchy in the mouth it is basically a literal tower of cream puffs that are stuck together with a hard crunchy caramel i could make a croquembouche start to finish in probably four hours that is if i'm like focused and also i am a professional and i've had lots of practice we've blocked out the whole day and also i asked nick to make one component in advance so both nick and i have made the pastry cream because that would slow us down a lot today i mean i'm gonna be here as nick's guide and sort of baking fairy godmother through the whole process that said i hope i don't get frustrated orientation at any point but i think the caramel can be tricky i'm also here to like manage the whole situation so i got nick on zoom oh wait you're muted hi are you nervous about any part of this the only thing i'm slightly concerned with is i understand caramel can be tricky with temperatures and you can burn yourself i feel really good about the assembly aspect so i'm feeling good right in the way today what would you say is your level of baking experience oh slim to none you know that the staff it's family members have sometimes low patience [Laughter] [Music] so for special equipment you will need a couple of pastry bags also a star tip for making the peta shoe you could use a stand mixer we're going to do it by hand it's not that hard to do by hand and then a one inch round cutter if you don't have a round cutter you could use a pastry tip that has about a one inch diameter or you can even use a bottle cap anything that is about one inch diameter circle you could use to punch out something called crackling in terms of other equipment you'll just need a couple of sheet trays some parchment paper as well as a rolling pin so in terms of ingredients i already have the chocolate pastry creme made that uses milk corn starch eggs sugar chocolate very straightforward and then for the assembly you'll need brown sugar all-purpose flour a little bit of sugar butter milk eggs kosher salt and a lot of sugar for making the caramel so we're going to start with cracklin or like crack law however you want to say it this is like a very basic almost cookie like dough that we're gonna use and we're gonna cut out little circles and the circles are gonna sit on top of the little mounds of cream puff dough grab a bowl and a spatula okay excellent and then one stick of butter do you have it at room temp i hope you do yes i do okay good the whole stick right the whole stick add your brown sugar nick you have three quarters of a cup of packed light brown sugar and i did it by way so it should be golden oh my god you did it by way did jane help you yeah jane was like pull out that scale son so jane wasn't much of a baker she got her hands on dessert person and has made a bunch of the recipes from the book and they've turned out so great and now jane is like a pro baker straight out so we're gonna do the same thing with you so add the sugar and start to work it with a spatula until you have something really smooth and creamy looking show me that spatula that is not the right kind of spatula let me see do you have like a different kind of spatula that's like more for like scraping that's like a spatula for flipping pancakes like this yes yes use that spatula what you want nick is like a very homogenous mixture where you don't see individual bits of butter if you need to you can zap it in the microwave for like eight seconds i'm already impatient put in the microwave i'm adding a pinch of salt to mine when yours comes out of the microwave add a pinch of salt how much is a pinch is it a gram it depends on the kind of salt that you're using but when i do a pinch nick i do three fingers i do these two fingers and a thumb okay three fingers perfect killing it okay so now back with this battle oh wow that's way easier hey that looks pretty good it's like definitely getting to that singular consistency that you're talking about so go ahead and add your flour now do you have one cup of flour measured out dump that in same thing with a spatula work it in and it's gonna seem kind of dry which is normal how's yours looking it's a little crumbly is that cool you want the flour to sort of disappear you know like it won't look white and powdery anymore i want to try to use like snowboarding metaphors but i've never been snowboarding so i don't know any of them kneading means that you are folding it and pressing it down on top of itself you don't have to hold your bowl i was just holding it to show you you can do it on there i'm just holding it to show you so you're basically trying to bring it together into one big piece that's evenly mixed it should look like cookie dough that looks really good okay so now what you want to do nick is take it out of the bowl grab your rolling pin and parchment paper so nick put one piece of parchment paper down put half the dough on top and then i'm going to use the second sheet of parchment to go right on top of the first piece of dough and now we're going to roll on top of the parchment paper with the rolling pin so one thing you want to do is switch the directions of the rolling pin so if you're rolling in one direction rotate the parchment paper 90 degrees and then start rolling the other direction okay so i'm just pushing straight the whole time yes exactly we want to roll this out nick into about an eighth of an inch thick piece this looks like a millennium falcon that is star trek oh my god seriously wars falcon is definitely star wars i made nick and jane's wedding cake and they got married on may 4th and i would say jane is not a star wars fan i was like i'm not having a star wars themed wedding so nick but she did stipulate to a star wars themed wedding cake so into the fridge maybe cover it nick with that other piece of parchment just so it doesn't dry out too much we want to chill this for 10 to 15. [Music] we're moving on to kind of the core of the recipe which is making parachute parachute is the french name for cream puff dough and it's a little bit atypical because it's cooked on the stove first before it's baked and the ingredients are very straightforward we have milk flour whole eggs kosher salt butter and a little bit of sugar and that's really it so nick into your saucepan you're going to put your half cup of whole milk and your half cup of water so we do 50 50 water and milk so then a half teaspoon kosher salt got it your one tablespoon of sugar and then your butter the seven tablespoons butter all of the seven little chunks all of it right in there this can go on the stove top now on like medium medium burner medium heat copy that and now do you have a wooden spoon or if not you can use that same spatula perfect okay so all at once add the flour mixture you want to stir rapidly but gently at first when the flour disappears next start stirring really aggressively so go ahead and dump that into your bowl we do clean as you go well when i say clean i just put everything in the sink and then i wash it later i had to do all my dishes last night that was tight so now the pata shoe is rested a little bit so i'm not going to curl the eggs i'm going to start to add them one by one we want to fully incorporate the egg nick but it's going to look a little weird like all the pieces of the dough are going to kind of separate and get coated in the egg and it's going to look like it doesn't want to recombine but just keep stirring and eventually it will by the fifth egg or so it will start to smooth out and get a little bit looser so i think that this is actually done because one of the things i look for is the mixture will fall off of the spoon or the spatula and form a v-shape just like this nick you see what that looks like how it forms this kind of v-shape off of the spoon yeah totally check this out yours looks better than mine it's a little loose maybe but that's not necessarily bad if it's too loose it won't puff and form you know a hollow thing but i don't think that it's too loose it could just mean that you cooked your slightly less and so you started out with more moisture but we're going to go with it the powder shoe is done i'm going to fill the pastry bag this is what we'll use to pipe the cream puffs nick i'm going to spoon the mixture into the pastry bag right and leave those sides down and around so that they stay clean if you can nick try to avoid making like lots of air pockets take those sides of the bag lift them up and let the dough settle into the pastry bag go ahead and squeeze it and start to twist at the top of the bag okay and then i like to put a little rubber band on the end to secure it so it doesn't come undone and now here we have our piping bag of pata shoe i haven't cut an opening yet we're just going to leave this here because before we pipe everything i'm going to pivot back to the crackling and we're going to cut our circles and preheat our oven then we'll be ready to bake the cream puffs [Music] nick and i are grabbing our cracklin out of the fridge because that has had a time to chill ooh mine are kind of stuck together are yours ooh try to peel it off we want to separate the two pieces yeah we're gonna punch out circles one at a time and then the circles of crackling are going to go on top of the cream puffs as they bake we want to punch out around 70 rounds and we should have more than enough crackling to do that i already have 30. i know that your kitchen's a little cooler but mine is warm so i'm going to chill the cracklin because it's getting a little soft i put mine back in the fridge that i finished and i put this one back in the fridge like between because it was getting soft that was very smart so i'm going to cover my plate of crackling with another plate instead of using plastic i'm trying not to do that okay so i'm sticking mine in the fridge [Music] i have two baking sheets and two pieces of parchment paper then earlier i took that same pastry tip that i used for punching out the crackling and i traced around it to make circles on the parchment paper a permanent marker is kind of the only thing that will draw on parchment a grid of one-inch circles that is seven by five so i have 35 rounds per sheet of parchment paper so 70 total and then what i do is i i take the parchment paper and i turn it over so that the ink side is down but i can still see the circles i take a tiny bit of parachute and i smear a little dab in each of the four corners just the tiniest amount then again ink side down on the parchment paper place it over top smooth it out a little and now you have these sort of anchor points and it's not going to go anywhere i'm a little concerned about your pata shoe but we're going to go with it does it seem like it's oozing out really easily yeah it's like i feel like i need to put it in the fridge for a couple minutes uh-oh it is coming out quick let me see i mean it's not water but like pipe a little mound like onto your finger and let me see what it looks like oh no that's fine you're fine it's not like settling into a puddle you're fine all the holes no i'm going to position the pastry bag so the tip is hovering right above the surface of the parchment paper and i'm at an angle sort of between the edge of the circle and the center of it and i apply even pressure to the bag and without moving the tip of the pastry bag i allow the dough to fill the circle and then once it's filled i lift up at the bag with a bit of a flick and i have now piped an even mound of dough i'm going to keep going until i filled all the circles on both baking sheets and you should use basically all of the padded shoe that you have oops dang it if i were making normal cream puffs i would do a little egg wash and bake them but instead of egg wash we are going to bring in the cracklin and top each one so i'll show you what that looks like take a circle and just gently place it on top of each puff and it can sort of rest and hover above the pata shoe it's like putting a little hat on it my parchment stand wow circles of crackling look great the puffs are a little they look a little loose so nick you're going to want to bake yours for a long time because they have a lot of moisture in them so my oven is preheated to 425 these go in the oven i have a rack on the top third and bottom third so as soon as i put them in the oven i'm going to drop the temp to 375 and then they're gonna go steady all the way through at that temp but after 20 minutes i'll rotate so that they get even browning so top to bottom and then 180 degrees and they'll go for 30 to 40 minutes they're not very uniform and i don't think they're raised up but whatever [Music] nyx and my cream puffs have baked they've been resting in the oven to really dry out and now we're going to take them out poke some holes and then let them fully cool you're going to take a paring knife i'm using this one because i don't feel like getting out of paring knife okay taking the tip of the knife and pouring out a little hole in the bottom this will help any trapped steam to escape it's also going to create a little spot where i can insert the pastry tip to fill them they feel nice and light and poppy yes they should feel totally hollow so pastry cream is milk that is thickened with eggs sugar corn starch and then butter is added to it so it's this really rich creamy smooth consistency this is a version that i melted some chocolate into the chocolate also increases the firmness the set of it so in this recipe i'm lightening it with a little bit of creme fresh although i forgot to buy creme fraiche so i sent harris out and he bought me sour cream i got creme fraiche cream fish let's look at your pastry cream wow the consistency looks great all right and you've never even made it before correct this is the first try i have two cups of whole milk pinch of kosher salt [Music] lay it poop this is the two or three minutes all right we've got a lot of that ribbon and we're whisking and we're spilling oops [Music] all right i guess it's a slightly bigger bowl could have been better we need to mix in chocolate right away it's still hot boom and now we need some film instead of just covering the bowls we're pushing it right on down to the surface because we're gonna be using this stuff tomorrow success wow looks really good it's really tasty i know isn't it delish there's a lot of ways to flavor it it's up to you i think i mean vanilla is super delicious but i like the flavor addition of chocolate and i like the way the chocolate pairs with the caramel on the croquembouche nick just make sure it's well mixed wow this chocolate just got a lot lighter with this cream it's like the best chocolate pudding that same setup that you had before with the piping bag inside that tall cup you're going to fill it the same way wow look at that look at that ripple now piping is really best on a two hands but in this case i need one hand to hold the cream puff so what i want to make sure of is that the bag is really sort of tightly twisted so that i can use one hand holding the bag to squeeze as i use the other hand to position the puff and you know make sure i'm not over filling it i am taking one puff at a time and where i poked that little hole it just goes right over the pastry tip squeeze firmly but gently you don't want to squeeze too fast because you don't want to overfill the puff it's like not much cream on the inside and it just ends up on the back of it that's okay just fill them as much as you can all right go ahead and fill one at a time if you're like i could take a little bit more you can put a little bit more in there and then twist as you go [Music] we have our filled baked cream puffs we are moving into the final assembly stage but i actually like to divide it up into two separate steps first we coat the puffs in the caramel then we start to stack them so we are going to cook a pretty dark caramel and i like to transfer from the pot to a heat-proof measuring cup so that it doesn't end up over cooking and burning because there's so much heat in the pot also nick it's a good idea to wear a pair of gloves do you have like a pair of latex gloves or even like dishwashing gloves we're gonna use two cups of sugar and a half cup of water i have a large saucepan right here so i'm going to combine those in the saucepan so we're cooking two batches of caramel this is just the first one and that's because the work time on the caramel isn't super long so as the caramel cools it starts to harden i have my mixture of two cups sugar half cup of water okay so nick so you got that on like medium medium once you see bubbles all over nick all across the surface that's when you can use your pastry brush and you're going to like take the wet brush and brush it around the sides of the pot really close to like the level where you have the sugar solution and you can see like little stuck on sugar crystals that's what you want to dissolve with the wet pastry brush until you see it start to turn golden keep it on medium and then eventually we're going to pull the whole thing off and pour the contents of the caramel into the measuring cup once it starts to take on color i'm going to keep a close eye on it dial down the heat so that i really can accurately get to that dark amber color without overcooking it and then i'll transfer it to our measuring cup [Music] the only goal here is to get a nice even fully coated domed surface dipped in the caramel so i'm grasping each puff by the edges like right below where that cracklin is covering the surface and i just go into the caramel let the excess drip off a bit and then right on to this other baking sheet the latex gloves it's not like it's creating a huge barrier between your skin and the caramel but at the very least the caramel will harden on the gloves and not on your skin if you get a little bit but you want to be really careful here a sugar burn sucks basically just that crackling coated part of the puff is what you're dipping into the caramel so i'm using a plate that i'm turning upside down you could use a cake stand you can use a cake round you can use the base of a tart pan that you covered in like a little foil with this many cream puffs i'm starting with a base ring of about 11. in general like we decrease the number of puffs in a ring by one as we build up depending on the size sometimes you'll need one more or one less so i'm just kind of setting these around the base to give myself an idea of what the diameter is going to be the second i have that wet caramel attaches to the plate it's going to stick there and once i let it harden it's not going anywhere and then i'm using the second batch of caramel i just need like a little more caramel to dip the sides of each one and then i'm going to stick it on that way how's it going i'm only fishing out my third cup are you regretting this whole project at this point or no absolutely not are you sick of it uh no i feel like there's some fatigue yeah it's long right it's also like a new level of respect being like okay i get it there's some things that can go wrong [Music] here's what i'm going to do i'm going to take my dipped caramel puffs and i'm going to now dip the sides into the caramel and let it just hang out i'm going to hold it in place and i have the puffs positioned caramel side out so instead of up i'm pointing them outwards and i'm using kind of like the curve of the plate to guide me in how i position each one we are building this hollow there's no form inside often for like professional bakers often you will see a form that they're using to create something really like perfectly even not my style oh no what happened going too fast i need to set it longer because it's falling on itself i got two or three that just broke off from the bottom oh no oh no can you stick them back on i'm working on it one thing i'm doing is ever so slightly angling each puff inward slightly to create that slope this is way more fun right the caramel is slightly frustrating but building it is pretty fun how many did you do around the first base was it 11 i'm at 11 like the cookbook suggests so you can see that my caramel is starting to harden and as it hardens it forms these threads so i'm using this little offset spatula and wrapping the threads around now i'm realizing my walls are falling uh-oh look it takes a lot of practice ah shoot man this is hard everything's leaning in on itself collapsing it looks good from this angle you might want to start thinking about doing one that's like more of a dome or like just a smaller cone all right which way is the good side it's not quite the crooken boosh tower it's like a crooked ball did you get chocolate or vanilla that one was vanilla let me see if i can find a chocolate one i think i like the chocolate one better okay i just have one question was it worth it to spend the last seven hours doing this was it worth it i mean trying new things and like having something to show for it it's pretty cool what a great attitude i love that attitude and i couldn't agree more even though the puffs are a little squat it looks like you've filled them so well the caramel coating is very even they're very round i'm deeply impressed i have to say wow well i really appreciate that coming from you i guess the question is to the people the folks what do you want me to see me try to make next nick is better at youtube than i am if i could do it again and make them bigger with more cream inside of them that would obviously be improvement number one number two would be more consistent puffs three would be my architecture and work on that a little better flavor is number one important and obviously you nailed that one look i'm exhausted this is a lot of work i have sugar everywhere i'm a professional i've made this before i can only imagine how many dishes nick has to do at home but it's a really fun project i think it was a great way for both nick and i to spend a rainy sunday thank you for watching dessertperson as always we'll be back with more content more videos let us know what you thought about this idea of me teaching someone in this case remotely but maybe even in person a novice baker how to make their favorite treat because i love being able to teach people and that's what dessert person is all about so as always thanks for watching like and subscribe thank you [Music]

Channel: Claire Saffitz x Dessert Person

Views: 747,071

Keywords: claire saffitz, dessert person, how to bake, baking, how to, simple, recipe, Claire makes, claire saffitz dessert person, recipes, bon appetit, gourmet makes, dessert, claire saffitz makes, croquembouche, croquembouche recipe, croquembouche tower, amateur chef, amateur baker, claire makes croquembouche, caramel, how to make caramel, cream puffs, cream puff tower, how to make cream puffs, cream puff recipe, cream puff, caramel recipe, pate a choux, tower, How To Make Croquembouche

Id: OwQlEF8DXs8

Length: 24min 23sec (1463 seconds)

Published: Thu May 06 2021