Croquembouche

Yesterday afternoon, my very old family friend, Amy, came over to make a croquembouche with me. It was her birthday (party) yesterday so this was meant to be her birthday cake. She'd already made the choux pastry and we intended to make the custard and toffee at my house.

In case you don't remember, it was something like 40C yesterday.

She had used 30 eggs to make the choux pastry. We used a further 19 egg yolks for the custard (I cracked one yolk with the shell and it was hilarious then I cried). We tried to make toffee. It didn't turn brown. We held each other and wept. We piped custard into choux pastry. All my custard came out the top of the piping bag and onto my hand. I ate it. We dipped our profiteroles into our sad, non-toffee-coloured sugar/glucose syrup and attempted to stick said sad profiteroles onto our cardboard cone.

It started off fine. We saw our dreams came to life... And then, sadly, things began to slip. Literally. It collapsed onto itself. At this point, it was almost 6pm and her party was due to start at 6.30pm.

Amy said to me, "Fuck it, let's just make a pyramid and stack them onto of each other," except with less profanity (my mother was there). We stacked furiously for some 15 odd minutes. We got tired and started shoving cashous and Maltesers in every and all crevices.

There was sugar syrup all over the floor. Then Amy had the brilliant idea of just pouring cashous on top of our sad mountain.

"Nooo," mother screamed, alas too late as a scatter of cashous (accompanied by that delightful sound of pebbles bouncing) spread across our dining room floor.

We kicked Amy out after that. I scrubbed sugar off of me and showered up. I went to said party and ate a shit tonne of profiteroles.

It was good.

Happy New Year, folks.

J