Last Thursday night, I went to Chippendale for the Croquembouche masterclass held by Vincent Gaden from Patisse. A croquembouche is a French dessert that looks like a tower made from choux pastry filled with creme patisserie. It looks and tastes amazing!
Both Simon Food Favourites and Not Quite Nigella have already been to the Patisse Croquembouche masterclass a few years back. Any cooking or baking class is not particularly cheap so probably best to use a voucher from Cudo, Travelzoo, Ouffer, Livingsocial, Ourdeals, Groupon, Spreets etc. However, you won't find any of the famous ones on offer as yet as they are popular as it is. I would love to do a macaron class but they are closer to $200 and at $3.00 each on average I can get over 60 macarons and I don't even need to clean up the mess. Going to the croquembouche class was worth the $185. Croquembouches can costs up to $150+ for a lovely decorated one and when you find out the amount of effort that is involved in making and assembling this "crunch in a mouth", you will happily pay for the well made cake. I got a voucher worth $25 to see Masterchef live and they offered us wine and a lovely dinner - a crunchy baked quiche probably worth $20 so class is about $140 but you get to take that cake home with you. The Masterchef live worth $25 is just a bonus that you wouldn't normally get though. The best thing about the class is that you won't have to do the cleaning up and they have all the utensils required for the croquembouche.
So would I recommend this class? Definitely!!! Vincent Gaden is seen on Masterchef a few times now and it's nice to be able to learn from a Masterchef. They have macaron class and souffle classes as well. I haven't quite mastered souffle but it's really easy so I wouldn't recommend paying $185 just to learn how to make it but a croquembouche is a lot more difficult than souffle.
I love the angel hair part the most when it comes to making this dessert. It just looks amazing but unfortunately with the humility, the caramel can melt so its usually created two hours before an event and served up. Also, need to put the croquembouche in the fridge if you make it the day before. You learn other great tips in class too such as how to pipe the choux pastry and fill it with cream as well as how to assemble the croquembouche using caramel.
I love the end result and my masterpiece creation. Class was like 4 hours long and assembling takes at least 45 minutes for 50 choux pastry. I needed 51 as the last one formed top of the tree. For weddings, it would be beautiful to use flowers for decoration. Here we were given rose, lavender, chocolate balls, hundreds and thousands sprinkles and icing sugar. I think too much would be overdone but too little means your croquembouche is too plain and boring.
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| Croquembouche with red angel hair |
Details of how this is made can be found @ Not Quite Nigela's website Step by Step Guide
A video and further details from Simon's Food Favourite's Croquembouche Patisse Masterclass
Patisse is no longer a cafe but a cooking school only and they have high tea pop ups and are at Pyrmont Farmer Grower's Market every first Saturday of the month.
Patisse Cooking School classes are found on their website and they are now at Chippendale, previously at Waterloo.
Patisse Cooking School
Ground Floor
67-69 Regent Street
CHIPPENDALE NSW 2018
PH: (02) 9690 0665
E: info@patisse.com.au
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