Profiteroles - how to make them more spherical?

[AltonBFan]

I am planning on making a croquembouche cake for my wedding next august. I've tried making some puffs and they taste great but they are a little flat. I have tried cooling the dough but either I did not get it cold enough or that is not enough. HELP PLEASE

[panini]

please post your formula but most important the method and proceedure. This is a pretty easy fix. Not understand the cooling part. Some methods tell you to cool your choux paste in the mixer with a paddle before the eggs. This step is really to get even further evaporation. The most important step is to get a good jump in a hot oven to develope size and then cut heat to more of a drying process. We do alot of these, so look forward to helping you. Next August 06?

[AltonBFan]

I was using Alton Brown's recipe from his new book, I'm Just Here For More Food. He doesn't instruct you to dry out the paste as i had seen in other recipes. This makes sense why my paste is so runny. On my last batch, i refrigerated the paste and that made for better puffs, but still pretty flat on the bottom. i'll give them another shot using your advice. thanks.

[AltonBFan]

And yes, the wedding is august 06 so I have plenty of time to practice!

[panini]

ABF,
how are those puffs going?

[AltonBFan]

I tried another batch yesterday and it went well. They're much more round and look pretty good. The caramel also seemed to be a piece of cake. Now I just need to figure out how I can nicely stack 7 batches!

[Zukerig]

The choux paste I have used to make croquebouche comprises:

2½ cups plain flour
2 cups water
½ pound sweet butter
1 teaspoon salt
10 large eggs

Naturally, it is best used while still warm.

You will be prudent to assemble your croquembouche not more than 4 hours before its served – or the sugar may melt! You can build it up freehand, in a pricey mold, or on a custom-built jig such as an inverted clay flowerpot set on the serving platter. Acknowledge that you are assembling a pastry tower – the puffs are the bricks, and the caramel is your mortar.

Store your croquembouche in a cool dry environment; the air in a refrigerator is too humid, and will cause the caramel to weep. Perhaps that is one reason why the French usually serve it on New Years!

[panini]

ABF,
I'm glad these are turning out for you. You can purchase inexpensive styro cones at the craft store and wrap them in something food safe and build your Croq up. It sounds like you have the caramel down. I would just like to throw something your way. The presentation for the croq is quite eye appealing, but the serving can be different.. Some times the caramel will stick resulting in the puffs tearing. I just want to tell you that a few years ago, I switched our croq's to chocolate covered with great sucess. We top the puffs in white or dark choco and then assemble with temp choco. They are very easy to build and the presenbtation can be chilled longer. Just a thought.
Panini
BTW the white choco looks great at weddings, dione that before.

[AltonBFan]

Hey. Thanks for the tip. I wonder if the cone will work with so many puffs. If the whole inside is styrofaom wont 225 puffs be about 5ft tall?? I have no experience in this but found trying to get 35 puffs in a nice cone shape to be a bit challenging.

We had great luck cracking the caramel last night. Instead of using big goops we held it together with tons of really thinly spun webs. Then we placed a lattice around it to give it some more body. It was secure and surprisinglyn easy to pull together with a fork. I think it helped that I heated the caramel to 285 to give it a nice hard crack.

I also have been filling the puffs with custard flavored with orange zest. It's so tasty!

We looked into having this made for the wedding. There was only one bakery in our area that would do it and they wanted $500+ and wouldn't do any flavorings! **** I can do it for under $40. What a ripoff! I'm glad I'm able to do it. It will probably be a little hectic but we can do the puffs and custard the day before and our friends have a double oven so we can streamline the process. Our wedding also isn't until 4pm so I can assemble it that day. I'm glad things are running pretty smoothly but got a little freaked out when I assembled this batch and had to visualize a cake 7 times that! At least we're having a small wedding of 70 people.