Croquembouche

To prepare a croquembush recipe of French cuisine, heat the oven to 200°C (390°F), cover the baking sheet with baking paper. Pour water and milk into the pan, add salt, butter, room temperature, and put on fire. When the butter has melted, bring the liquid to a boil, and stirring with a wooden spoon, add all the sifted flour.

Mix quickly, during which time the dough warms up and brews. When all products are mixed into a homogeneous mass, remove from heat. You should not keep the dough on fire for a long time, oil will start to stand out and the dough will become liquid. If it so happened that the dough was overexposed to the fire, you can add a small amount of flour, but this will not be quite a custard dough and may affect the quality of the baking.

Add the egg to the cooled dough and mix with a spatula or a wooden spoon until smooth, then the next egg, and again until smooth, etc. The dough should not be too liquid, but at the same time not the same as dumplings.

Transfer the choux pastry into a pastry bag or pastry syringe. Put the dough on a baking sheet in small portions and put in the oven. Bake profiteroles for 20 minutes.

Separately prepare the cream. Mix milk, egg and sugar, put the mixture on low heat, bring to a boil and cook for another 2 minutes. Beat softened butter until white with vanilla sugar. Without ceasing to whisk, gradually introduce syrup. The cream should turn out airy, add cognac to the whipped cream and mix. Using a pastry syringe, fill the chilled profiteroles with cream.

Pour water into sugar in a separate bowl and put on low heat. Bring to a boil, pour in lemon juice, mix, cover and put on medium heat. Boil the syrup for 15-20 minutes before caramelization.

There are several ways to collect crochembush. If according to the classics, then the profiteroles smeared on the sides with caramel are laid out in a circle in the form of a cone, while the middle of the cone remains hollow. Another option is a bit easier. Roll a cone from thick paper, place the sharp end in a container for stability, put profiteroles in a paper cone, periodically lubricating the layers with caramel. Give the caramel to set, and then turn it over to the dish. But there is another way, lay out profiteroles in layers, reducing to the top, thus, we get a solid pyramid.

Decorate the assembled profiteroles pyramid with a grid of caramel threads. To do this, dip the fork into caramel, and then pour the net on baking paper. Detach the caramel mesh from the paper and place it on croquembush. It is best to collect croquembush and decorate with caramel shortly before serving, otherwise the caramel may drain.