The Brownie Croquembouche

Need

• 2 Batches Black and white Brownie (cooked in separate layers)

• The Ganache "Glue"

• 400 Grams chocolate white callets BUY
• 200 Grams cream BUY

• Topping Ideas

• white chocolate, pistachio ganache
• Pistachio Praline as needed Recipe
• Creamy Vanilla Buttercream with raspberry coulis added Recipe
• Christmas sprinkles, silver sugared almonds, gold baubles, M&M's, little Christmas sugar decorations, (see note) edible gold leaf

Do

1  

Bake Black and White Brownies separately, so you have one tray of brownie and one tray of blondie. Cool. Cut into squares 4x4cm approximately. The cooking times may vary from the original recipe based on how thick your brownie and blondie layers are.

2  

To make the ganache, place chocolate and cream into the Thermomix bowl. Melt 5 min/50°C/speed 1. Scrape bowl and melt 3 min/50°C/speed 1. Scrape and repeat if needed. This is your "glue". It will set over time. YOu will need to let it cool significantly in order to pipe with it, but you can certainly glue the tower together while it is still fairly liquid.

3  

On your serving tray of choice, start glueing the brownies with the ganache in a circle. Spread ganache on each brownie before placing it where you want it. You cannot have too much ganache, it will set and the drips will look like snow. Each layer of brownies should be placed over the gap of the previous layer, for stability. As you work your way up, slightly bring the circle closer to middle, until you've reached the top of the tree.

4  

With the remaining ganache, use a star nozzle and pipe rosettes into the gaps.

5  

We also used raspberry butter cream and pistachio ganache to pipe into the gaps. You will use all of these little additions to glue the decorations on, so take your time and fill the tree to the brim.

6  

To make the pistachio buttercream we combined some of the white ganache recipe here with a little pistachio paste until we had the colour and consistency to pipe.

7  

Decorate with xmas sprinkles, m&ms, gold leaf, lollies, anything you like!!

8  

We created the top of the tree with a big piped ganache dollop then covered it in edible gold leaf. You could use a cookie star for the top or anything else that you come up with! Get creative, then tag us!

9  

To give you an estimate of the size of this thing, I would say it weighed about 5 kilos at least. (There is a lot of chocolate in that whole thing!) This served us many times over, a party, a family thing, another family thing and I was cutting slices of it in the end and giving it away! So plan to make this when you need to serve a LOT of people.