Mini Halloween Croak-en-BOO-sh

A croquembouche is a fancy pants French dessert that involves a beautiful tower of caramel and cream puff tastiness wrapped in a tornado of spun sugar. They are a thing of beauty. Check out the picture from Bon Appetit, this is one impressive dessert!

If you've never heard of this dessert before and have no idea how to speak French, the name is pronounced "croak-en-boo-sh" and, while less fancy pants than a tower of cream puffs, I couldn't get over the idea of it being a "croak" - frog, en - which means "in" in Spanish, BOO- hello Halloween!, sh- have to have the SH in there. Putting that all together and playing with the idea of having a frog inside a Halloween themed tower of cream puffs, I created this monstrosity of a dessert. We have cream puffs, cookies, eyeballs, cotton candy spider webs... and there's a frog in there somewhere too!

It takes some time to put together but these cream puffs are tasty and worth the effort. Leave out the silliness of Halloween if you don't go for puns on French desserts, but don't skip out on making this eye-popping dessert!

This croak-en-boo-sh requires a few parts. Craquelin, choux dough, filling, and then decorating. Here is what you need to make it:

To make craquelin, you will need:

1/2 cup of unsalted butter, softened

4 oz light brown sugar (1/2 cup)

4 oz all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)

pinch of salt

food coloring (optional)

To make choux dough, you will need:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup 2% milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

4 large eggs, beaten

To make the filling, you will need:

whipped cream

powdered sugar

strawberry jam

food coloring (optional)

To make the tower, you will need:

Oreos

sugar cones

frosting

chocolate chips

gummy Life Savers

peanut M&Ms

frog (optional)

cotton candy

Craquelin, pronounced crack-a-lin, is a simple dough made of sugar, butter, flour, and a pinch of salt. The craquelin gives the top of the choux buns a crackly top and adds a sweet, crunchy texture. It is an extra step, but it is worth the trouble!

To make craquelin, you will need:

1/2 cup of unsalted butter, softened

4 oz light brown sugar (1/2 cup)

4 oz all-purpose flour (about 1 cup)

pinch of salt

Mix the brown sugar and softened butter until light and creamy. Add in flour and salt and mix until the flour is incorporated. Roll the dough between two pieces of parchment paper, about 1/4 inch thick. Though the dough will be sticky, do not add extra flour.

If you'd like to color your choux buns, add some food coloring at this stage. I colored half my craquelin orange.

Place craquelin + parchment paper in the fridge while you make the choux dough.

This craquelin recipe is from Serious Eats.

Choux, pronounced shoe, is a French pastry dough that is pretty versatile. You can make cream puffs, eclairs, profiteroles and even churros all from this one dough! It has a reputation of being tricky to make, but if you follow the steps, you're sure to succeed! Below is the cooking part of the dough, in the next step I'll talk about adding in the eggs.

To make choux dough, you will need:

1/2 cup unsalted butter, cut into chunks

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup 2% milk

1/4 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup all-purpose flour

4 large eggs, beaten (see next step)

In a saucepan, combine the butter, water, milk, salt, and sugar. Cook over medium heat until the butter has melted, stirring occasionally. Bring to a simmer then reduce heat to low. Add the flour in all at once and stir until the flour is completely incorporated. Mash the dough against the bottom and sides of the pan with a rubber spatula and cook for 1 minute. A thin layer of dough will form on the pan, this is normal. Don't try to scrape that layer of dough from the pan. Remove dough from heat and transfer to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment.

This choux recipe is from Sally's Baking Addiction.

Let the dough cool in the stand mixer for about five minutes. Turn the mixer on occasionally during this time to break up the dough and let some heat out. The dough shouldn't be cold before you add in eggs, but you don't want to scramble the eggs by adding them to a hot dough.

Add eggs in, a little at a time. Mix for about 30 seconds between additions. Add in eggs until the dough is silky and smooth and a pipeable consistency. You don't usually need to add all the eggs, but it really depends on how much humidity is in the air, how big the eggs are, etc. I had a few teaspoons of egg left over. If you are not using the craquelin, you can use this leftover egg to brush on top of the choux buns as an egg wash with a little milk or water.

Now that the dough is ready, you can store it in the fridge up to 3 days or move onto piping the dough straight away.

Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Using a brush, brush the parchment paper with water. The water will help the choux buns puff up in the oven so make sure you don't skip this step.

Fill a piping bag with the choux dough. Pipe tiny little choux piles, using about a teaspoon and a half of dough per pile. Make the piles a little higher than wide, as you'll be adding the craquelin on top and that mushes the buns down a little.

Cut the craquelin using a cookie cutter that is about the size of your choux piles. Work quickly as you don't want the craquelin to get too warm, it becomes much harder to work with as it warms up. If needed, pop the craquelin back into the fridge or freezer for a few minutes to firm the craquelin up again.

Gently press the little craquelin hats onto the choux buns, keeping them as parallel as possible with the baking pan. If needed, you can use the craquelin scraps and reroll between the parchment paper again. If there are any leftovers, you can save it in the freezer future batches of choux.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Bake for 20 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F for another 10 minutes. At about the last minute of baking, take the pans out of the oven and poke each bun with a toothpick on the side or bottom. Work quickly and be careful, the buns are hot! Pop back in the oven for another minute or so of baking. Poking the buns will help release the air that may be built up in the buns which will help them to not collapse when you take them out of the oven. Let the buns cool on the baking sheets completely before moving on.

Aren't these the cutest little choux buns you ever did see?? You can make choux buns up to 3 days before filing and serving them, if desired.

The uncolored choux buns are going to be "eyeballs." To make them whiter, pop into a baggie with a little powdered sugar and give them a shake. Gently shake off any excess powdered sugar.

Poke each choux bun on the bottom with something like a knife. Or get creative and see what else you have laying around... I used the bottom part of a hand mixer whisk! Gently poke a hole in the bottom of each bun, this will give you access to fill the buns with cream.

You can fill choux buns with pastry cream, whipped cream, lemon curd... you can certainly get creative! I made two separate fillings for my little mini croquembouches!

For the filling, you will need:

whipped cream

powdered sugar

strawberry jam

red food coloring

For the orange choux buns, I mixed about 1/3 a tub of whipped cream and 1 cup of powdered sugar to make a sticky cream like filling.

For the white choux buns, I added in a bit of red food coloring and some strawberry jam to another 1/3 tub of whipped cream and 1 cup of powdered sugar.

Fill the cream puffs until they feel a little heavy. Don't overfill... the buns can explode if you add too much cream (which means you'll have to eat it now... of course that means you'll have to accidentally overfill a few...).

Part of the croak-en-BOO-sh is the BOO part! Which means we need some eyeballs to make this dessert a little scary (and maybe a little silly). I tried a few different candies but found gummy Life Savers with a chocolate chip pushed inside made for cute little irises. Pair them up so you're ready when it comes to assembly.

The next part of making the CROAK-en-boo-sh is to add the croak. As in frog. As in I couldn't resist a good pun. These little fraugs (frogs, I know) are made out of polymer clay. They're not edible, but aren't they cute! I made sure to tell the kids they can't eat them, but also told them they need to find the croaks in their croquembouches, it was a fun little extra that you absolutely can skip.

To make the tower that the choux buns are attached to, I used sugar cones. A real croquembouche has cream puffs dipped in caramel sauce and attached to each other without support, but these cream puffs need a little stability so a sugar cone worked perfectly. I filled each sugar cone with some peanut M&Ms, then piped a line of frosting around the outside of an Oreo. I added a little bloop of frosting in the middle to stick the frog to to closed the end of the sugar cone with the cookie. Note, double stuffed Oreos are not necessary for this step, you can use regular Oreos, or any other type of cookie you prefer. Oreos fit exactly the top of the sugar cones!

Next I coated the sugar cone with frosting and started stacking up the cream puffs. Add on two white puffs at a time to make sets of eye balls. Once the puffs were all added, I used a little frosting to attach the eyes to the white puffs.

The final steps are to add a little cotton candy and some spider rings to make the croquembouches scary fun! Traditional croquembouches have spun sugar around them, but I thought cotton candy would look like spider webs while still providing that traditional element of spun sugar. I made cotton candy with a cotton candy maker, but store bought would work well too!

Finally, I told the kids to find the croak. They busted the croak-en-boo-sh open to find the little frogs!

I hope you enjoyed this over the top, ridiculously punny Halloween treat. Any leftover mini choux buns can be stored in the freezer. They say you have to thaw them before you enjoy, but I like them frozen to be honest.

Happy Halloween!