The Daring Bakers' Challenge: Piece Montée (Croquembouche)

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.

The Original Recipe Source: The recipes I am using for this month’s challenge come from Peter Kump’s Baking School in Manhattan and were originally created by famed pastry chef, Nick Malgieri.The recipe for caramel cream filling is adapted from Martha Stewart.

And here it comes - my second challenge in The Daring Bakers group! I liked this one much more than the previous, because I liked the food much more and also the preparation, itself, seemed to me to be more "colourful". However, this French "cake" which name means something like "crunch in the mouth" truly is delightful. I decided to make a caramel cream filling, coffee pastry cream and chocolate pastry cream.

Tiramisu

 Hi again :) This week's recipe is Italian tiramisu. I used store-bought mascarpone cheese as I had decided to do it in the morning so there wouldn't have been enough time to do homemade mascarpone cheese. Tiramisu was absolutely fabulous! I ate it not even 2 hours after finishing the preparation. Plus it was eaten within 2 days, so good it was.
The ladyfingers (savoiardi) biscuits have to be soaked ONLY for 1 - 2 seconds to avoid making it all too soggy. Fast in, fast out. I recommend you to taste the espresso which is used for soaking the savoiardi biscuits to avoid it being too bitter, because then the savoiardi would be too bitter, too and that wouldn't not be good. So add more suger if needed. When it comes to amaretto liqueur it's not typical for tiramisu (marsala wine is the tradition) but it has a very nice almond flavour and I use it because it's pretty difficult to buy here this marsala wine. Anyway, don't be afraid to sprinkle the biscuits a little bit more with it - it has to have its taste :) The sweetness of the mascarpone cream is again up to you - I prefer it being sweeter 'cause the savoiardi themselves aren't too sweet and whole tiramisu is then sprinkled with pretty bitter cocoa powder and if you don't want it to be one big super bitter square make the cream sweeter. Next time I'd add the liqueur also into the cream to make its flavour more liquorish and well, the flavour of the liqueur wasn't too intense in these savoiardi.