Ann Reardon

Croquembouche recipe Profiterole Tower

croquembouche recipe profiterole tower

Croquembouche (crockenbush) are beautiful towers of custard filled profiteroles held together with caramelised sugar. This one is then wrapped in fine strands of pulled sugar. It looks impressive as a dessert centrepiece but is surprisingly easy to make.

Croquembouche Profiterole Recipe Ingredients
This recipe makes enough to make a croquembouche that is 27cm (10.63 inches) tall and 10cm (3.94 inches) in diameter at the base.

For the Choux Pastry Recipe
1 cup or 250millilitres (8.45 fluid ounces) Water
75g (2.65 ounces) or 1/3 cup Butter
160g (5.64 ounces) or 1 cup plain all purpose Flour
4 Eggs

croquembouche recipe easy

Heat the oven to 428ºF (220ºC)

Place the water and butter into a saucepan and heat until the butter is melted. Add the flour all at once and stir until it thickens and leaves the sides of the pan, continue to stir and heat for another minute until it forms a really stiff ball.
Remove it from the heat and add in the eggs one at a time mixing really well after each addition.

Place into a piping bag and pipe dollops onto the baking tray.
Bake for 20 minutes at 428ºF (220ºC) or until crisp.

Pastry Cream Recipe
500millilitres (16.91 fluid ounces) or 2 cups milk (4%)
4 egg yolks or 60g (2.12 ounces) – (you can use the whites for macarons or pavlova)
3/4 cup or 164g (5.78 ounces) sugar
30g (1.06 ounces) or 3 Tbsp flour
Whip the egg yolks and sugar until pale, whisk in the flour. Heat the milk, you can infuse it with flavour while it is heating, see the video for more help with this. Add a little hot milk at a time to the yolks mixture whisking as you do. Return to the pan and stir until well thickened.

Crispy Caramel and angel hair

150millilitres (5.07 fluid ounces) or 1/2 cup plus 1 Tbsp and 1 tsp water
450g (15.87 ounces) or 2 cups and 1 Tbsp sugar
21g (0.74 ounces) or 1 Tbsp liquid glucose or light corn syrup
Heat over high heat, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Wash down the sides of the pan with a wet pastry brush. Leave unstirred until it just starts to go golden. Remove from the heat.

Construct the Croquembouche

Make sure you are using non-stick baking paper so that your sugar does not stick to your mold.

You can buy a stainless steel mold for making larger croquembouche but they are expensive, so for making smaller ones you can see the video for making your own.

by Ann Reardon How To Cook That

My Cookbook

ann reardon crazy sweet creations cookbook
Stores that sell my book listed by country: http://bit.ly/ARcookbook
All recipe quantities in the book are in grams, ounces and cups.

85 Comments View Comments

  1. Hi Ann. There is no glucose liquid or corn syrup available anywhere in my country, or neighbouring country. Is it absolutely necessary or is there a substitute. I’ve youtube some diy corn syrup on youtube and it uses a ton load of sugar to make it.. and then i’m going to have to use that in the spun sugar recipe. and it just sounds like adding concentrated sugar to more sugar and it feels weird hahaha.

    • Hi Laina, Have you looked at online suppliers . You can definitely get glucose syrup via amazon if they deliver to your area. You sometimes can find it in chemists as well.

      • I’ll try the chemists. It’s hard ordering from Amazon cause the shipping charges get ridiculous or they don’t ship to my country

  2. Hi, can you make the choux pastry and bake them as eclairs or profiteroles and freeze them unfilled for a week before filling them or will it be too soggy and collapse when they defrost.
    Thanks Linda

    • Hi Linda, Some people do freeze them but they can go a bit soft afterwards. I prefer them fresh and quite crisp.

  3. Approximatly how many will one batch listed above make? I need to make quite a bit. Possibly an upwards of 150.

    • Hi Shane, this recipe made 45-50 of the small profiteroles as pictured above. That wass enough to make a croquembouche that is 27cm (10.63 inches) tall and 10cm (3.94 inches) in diameter at the base.

  4. Can I halve the choux pastry recipe in half?

    • Hi Caitlin, You can but of course you will get half the number of profiteroles from it.

  5. can i make the profiteroles a the night before? and how long does it take for the custard to cool?

    • Hi Rosie, Profiteroles are best fresh. You can make them the day before and store when totally cool and unfilled in a dry container. I like to put a bit of paper towel in the base of the container to absorb any moisture. The filling will cool in a couple of hours in the fridge.

  6. Is it hard for people to pull this apart with the caramel gluing each piece together? I want to make this for Christmas this year, and if the caramel makes it too hard to pull apart then I might just use chocolate instead. Please let me know 🙂

    • If you keep the coating light and thin, the profiteroles will prize apart easily. If you use a thicker coating to join them then itt will obviously require a little more effort to prize them apart. I have scene restaurants provide a little skewer and hammer to crack them apart. After exposure to the air the coating slowly softens making separation easier.

  7. If I make this the day before and then store it in the fridge, will it last 24 hours?

    • Hi Yvette, you cant store a croquembouche in the fridge as the pastry will go soft from the filling and the sugar decorations start to dissolve with the moisture. It will need to be assembled on the day. You can make the profiteroles the day prior and just fill on the day that is required.

  8. Thanks wery nice recipe.

  9. I watched the video today , and im going to attempt profiteroles or eclaires thx. Ur very appreciated. Keep on baking. Xx

  10. I am planning on making these very soon but with different flavour combos. Any advice for keeping the custard the right consistency?

    ie. coffee custard
    passionfruit custard
    lemon custard

    • Hi Nikitia, Ann suggests that you will need to monitor the amount of liquid you are adding. If you add additional liquid with your flavour, decrease the other liquid in the recipe by the same amount.

  11. Turned out great! Thanks for the lovely recipe!
    All the best

    • Hi Samantha, I would so like to taste this right now. Well done!

  12. Hi I I tried the above recipe and left it over night why did it melt and fall apart???

    • Hi Shuheli, A sugar left out in moist air will start to dissolve.

  13. Hi want to make this this week as a practise for a birthday! Can anyone tell me, what kind of milk to use in the recipe, what kind of sugar, what kind of flour for spun sugar? It doesn’t say in the recipe. Many thanks!

    • Hi Emma, while different terms are used in different countries this recipe asks for plain flour (sometimes called all purpose flour), milk (4% fat) which in Australia is called whole milk or full cream milk. Here is a link to our milk page in case you r location uses a different term. Lastly the sugar in baking is usually caster sugar but standard white sugar is fine too. it will just take a little longer to dissolve.

  14. It is currently in the oven right now, but I think I made the batter too thin 🙁

    I added an egg, apparently, and that was a big mistake. Oh well, I tried.

    Please do hope that it turns out well. I’m very worried about it.

    But thank you! And will surely try this out again, properly!

  15. yes i used margarine and i didnt see much difference

  16. Thank you so much for the Croquembouche recipe .I will make this on mothers day for my traditional english tea party.

  17. thanks for the recipe your the best

  18. Hi Ann,
    I was in the mood for something sweet and I thought of your lovely croquembouche recipe.
    It was amazing 🙂
    Thank you for the recipe!

  19. Thank you so much for your tutorial on how to make a Croquembouche, I made one for Xmas day 2014 and was very impressed on how easy you made each step. Thanks again Ann looking forward to making more of your recipes.

  20. Excellent recipes! I’ve done profiteroles before but I had to try this one knowing that your recipes come out great and this one really excels the old one!

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