Piece Montee / 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.

This month’s challenge recipe is for a Piece Montée, which means literally “mounted piece.” You may know this dessert by another name – Croquembouche (“crunch in the mouth”). I have been fascinated by this dessert for a loooong time. Where I live they call it ‘Bouche’ and I was always amazed by this little tower of tiny little buns that I thought they were and have always wanted to try my hand at one, though never had a good enough excuse…until now!

In all seriousness, the piece montée is the traditional wedding cake in France and served at baptisms and communions as well.

As I was busy the whole month; I kept the challenge till the last minute…… everything went well….. I made the Piece Montee in a Cone and the tower came out well..and was nicely standing till I inverted the dish on the platter and removed the cone. I was very pleased with the results…and then tragedy struck…..the parchment paper that I had under the cone just would not come out….. and in the process of removing the parchment paper, the tower collapsed.

So here is what I salvaged from the crashed Piece Montee…. And made a half erected tower.

Whatever it was, they were tasty…………….

Well I did not want to post it on my blog…but what the hell !!!!! I was Daring and was daring enough to try it…so here it is ……My failed Piece Montee / Croquembouche….