Master of the “Mounted Piece”

The fine arts are five in number: painting, sculpture, poetry, music, and architecture — whose main branch is pastry.

God I love the arrogance of chefs. The Lighthouse at Alexandria? The Colossus of Rhodes? Child’s play compared to that centerpiece I made for the buffet the other night. I mean did you SEE that thing?? Antonin Carême was more entitled than most to that attitude. He began building pièces montées — huge table centerpieces — at the age of seventeen, and studied architecture informally on his own starting at the age of thirteen. Pretty good for an illiterate peasant who grew up in Paris amid the French Revolution. Carême’s father literally abandoned him on the street one day at the age of eleven, telling him he was too smart to live at home in poverty with his twenty four sisters and brothers. Proving his father’s point, Carême got a job that night at a tavern and shortly began teaching himself to read and write. Within a year or two he was making regular trips to the French National Library where he paged through books on travel and especially architecture. He taught himself to sketch and at the age of fifteen began working for Sylvain Bailly, the top caterer in Paris.

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Who was Antonin Carême?

It occurred to me that a little primer might be in order — and here it is!

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“Lords, Ladies and Honored guests…

…will you now please direct your attention to the center of the gallery where we shall present tonight’s entremets for your amusement. We shall begin with an assortment of porridges flavored with pepper and cloves and colored with saffron. These are followed by three platters of duck innards boiled in ginger broth, adorned with pickled quinces in the shape of the Sardinian royal crest.

Following closely behind is a display of roasted spring hares stuffed with fried marinated sweetbreads and arranged as though they were still frolicking merrily on the sunny plains of Beauce. And what would our display be without fowl? Fix your gaze upon the center aisle where a bevy of swans now approaches

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Mold Or No Mold?

That’s the question of the week! My feeling at this stage is no mold. Or at any rate nothing made of metal, poster board or any of those sorts of substrates. The way I see it the challenges of a croquembouche are twofold: 1.) building it in such a way that it appears tall and graceful, not like a heap of paving stones, which can happen if you don’t have some sort of conical guide, and; 2. building it in such a way that it doesn’t lean, slump or tip over completely.

In an attempt to overcome challenge #1, many aspiring croquembouche makers construct witches hat-looking cones make of cardboard. They then build the pastry inside it, upside-down. When the caramel has cooled they up-end the croquembouche and remove the cardboard. The problem is that the cardboard doesn’t always come away cleanly and you’re left with unsightly bits of paper stuck

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What exactly IS a croquembouche?

Glad you asked! A modern croquembouche is a cone-shaped tower of cream puffs. Some people like to say “profiteroles”, but that word makes me think of chocolate sauce. Also the brilliantly acted but gruesome 1989 cult film The Cook, The Thief, His Wife & Her Lover. Where are my %@#^$# profiteroles!!! I shiver just thinking about it.

Croquembouche means “crunch in the mouth”, an apt description for what happens when you bite into a piece, as the “glue” that holds the tower together is candy cooked nearly to the caramel stage. Croquembouche is traditionally served as a centerpiece for a wedding or baptism party, and is often decorated with almonds. Glossy

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Next Up: Croquembouche

My personal belief is that a new year should kick off with an audacious project. I’ve been a bit slow off the blocks in 2014 and I think a waker-upper is in order. This should do the trick! I’m thinking about using the “crackling'” choux that’s so in vogue now since I don’t think I’ve seen that done on a croquembouche yet. Any yea or nays on that?

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Mixing, Over-Mixing and Muffins

Reader Mark writes:

Love the discussion of mixing! My question is, why do you get big holes in muffins when you mix the batter a lot? That seems to be contrary to what you wrote earlier this week, that more mixing usually means smaller holes.

Great question, Mark! I did indeed write that, yet also mentioned that the world of mixing is a wide one, and the same rules don’t apply to everything. Mixing a lot does yield a smaller crumb in the case of cake layers and brioche, both of which are quite high in fat. Muffins are quite a bit leaner than either one of those, which means

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Overnight Biscuits?

I’d like to take [your American] biscuits to work, but don’t want to get up at the crack o’ dawn to do them. Have you ever tried making the dough the night before and cutting them, then wrapping & fridging, and baking in the a.m.?

Tracey, I have never done that but here’s no reason that wouldn’t work! Since the dough will be wet all night you’ll lose some of the baking powder’s oomph, though less than you’d think since modern baking powders are formulated such they don’t react as much when they get wet. Most of the pop is reserved for when it gets hot. (For those of you

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Butter Consumption Hits 40-Year High

And people complain that news reports never have anything positive to say. Long time Joe Pastry readers know that I’ve been on the saturated fat bandwagon for years. My feeling is that consumers aren’t “looking the other way” as the article claims, but rather emerging from a long, long dietary expert-induced stupor. What rational person, left to their own devices, could ever conclude that something as delicious and wholesome as butter could ever be unhealthy? Now all we have to is rehabilitate lard and we’ll be living in paradise.

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