Merci!
August 27, 2014 Have you heard of the Croquembouche [CROCK-you-EAM-butchy]? It's a French thing.
Well, if not, here's what it's supposed to look like:
;)
So kinda like old, cobweb-wrapped monkey bread. But in a yummy way.
Well, a certain anonymous person - who shall remain unnamed to protect her anonymity - found this gem at a wedding which she may or may not have anonymously attended:
;)
I believe her exact words were, "it looks like some kind of primitive jungle cake being attacked by a swarm of lactating spider-wasps."
;)
Mmmm, lactating spider-wasps...
Well, uh, Jane D. [wink wink], thanks for putting a new spin on these things.
Note: I think it's important to ask yourself a couple of questions before commenting here on Cake Wrecks:
Question: Did Jen and john really intend to give us the pronunciation of a word?
Answer: No.
Question: Are Jen and john complete and total idiots?
Answer: No.
Question: Do they...
Answer: No.
Question: Would they...
Answer: No.
Question: What about...
Answer: No.
That is all.
*****
Thank you for using our Amazon links to shop! USA, UK, Canada.
Reader Comments (97)
Glad you didn't post this while we were in Paris in May. We probably would have run screaming at the mere sight of bakeries.
And Jen and John . . . . Yes, you DO! Which is why we love you.
Oh.
My.
I'ma HAVE to show this to me mudder. She made a croquembouche one year for Christmas/New Year and aside from the monumental effort - each little cream puff expertly baked until golden, filled with pastry cream, piled artistically, and then wrapped in filagrees of sugar and water heated until just below the hard-crack stage where it will make gossamer threads but they don't taste burnt (the timing on that MUST be precise - I have burned it many times over the years), her result looked gorgeous.
Each portion consisted of a single-bite of crunchy toffee threads, crisp choux pastry and lovely creamy filling.
So very UNLIKE that....that....well, I can't come up with a better descriptor than Godawful jungle...THING. Gaah. Sure to inspire nightmares for a long time to come. Which is unfortunate because a good crocquembouche is delectable. Sigh.
I'm a native Coloradan (not Coloradoan, gugh...) and I'll cop to Louisville and Lyons. But I have always said B-wen-a Vista, and P-web-low. So we don't all mess up all the time. And isn't that the theme of cake wrecks? :-)
And incidentally, my hubby's great grandpa helped found Chicken, AK!
What the cake wreck???!!?? Hey, someone might need to learn where the hairnet actually goes?? On the head ...not the food!!! You'd think there would be a CBT on that....lol
@Jodee:
I do, I do! (Though it's probably not fair since I live there.) But I'll throw those points back at you if you can pronounce "Osoyoos", "Siwash" or "Tonasket" (the town where I grew up, next to Omak and Okanogan).
There was a great episode of MTV's "Faking It" that featured a wedding shower croquembouche.
@Nanci Heh, heh, heh, you said pooder.
As for those who correct the pronunciation, give Dave Barry a read. Your head will explode. Mine does too--from laughter, just like when reading Cake Wrecks. LITERALLY. (Not literally.)
Yes it reminded me of Mrs. Habersham wedding cake molder ing away.....
Shout out and a wave to Sharyn and Kiersten - I live north of Denver. Maybe we should have a meet up and bring a Cake Wreck?
Here in Houston we have the street Kuykendahl pronounced (clearly, duh) as Kirk-in-doll.
I used to think Croquembouche was "Croaking bush". And now it is.
@Jodee - I know all of them! (I lived in Seattle for 5 years.) I think the hardest one to remember is Sequim - pronounced "Squim".
My favorite city pronunciation here in the south is Cairo, GA. It's not pronounced like the Egyptian city. Oh no. You have to put a thick southern drawl to it - "KAY-row".
Carol, you should try living in England. Beauchamp is pronounced Beechum. Beaulieu is pronounced Bewli. Beausale is pronounced Buzzel.
Glad I wasn't the only one to think of Miss Havisham! It looks like she tried reusing her original cake so I'm pretty sure she got stood up again!
The somewhat sad part is, after three years of High School French and a pretty good ear for languages, I was completely second guessing my (correct) pronunciation until I read the disclaimer. Mostly because I trust you guys and know you would never lead me wrong. I haven't been following for quite five years, so I missed that particular Epcot. Anyway, it just goes to show, you might have enough blind followers to take over the world.
My 7-year-old said, "That's a cake? It looks more like a pile of hairballs that's been painted." Mmmmmmm....hairballs...
Well done, ScaperMama!
and sounds good to me, pagopago!
I'm planning on eating the crockety-butch with a nice glass of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3DSgsON3u8E
The two mispronunciations my husband hates is Des Plaines (Dez Plainz), Illinois...and there's a college in Ohio called Rio (pronounced RYE-oh) Grande University.
There's also Nevada (Nah-VAY-dah), Iowa, and Beatrice (Bee-AH-triss), Nebraska. Also Kearney (KAR-nee), Nebraska.
A shibboleth for my town is spelled Valle. Newcomers pronounce it Vawl, outsiders, Vayle, and longtime residents...Valley.
@Sharyn
When I lived in Wagga Wagga (pronounced Wogga Wogga), there was a restaurant called 'Pizza Pizza Wagga Wagga'.
We have so many weird pronunciations here in Australia it would tie your brain in knots, so I won't even start.
I'd still eat it... All of it lol
"it looks like some kind of primitive jungle cake being attacked by a swarm of lactating spider-wasps."
KILL IT WITH FIRE!
In Iowa, we have the following towns:
Madrid, pronounced MAA-drid
Nevada, pronounced Neh-VEY-dah
Tripoli, pronounced Trih-PO-lah
and Peoria, pronounced PEAR-y
Shout out to @Jodee and @SaraCVT from a fellow Evergreen stater in the Okanogan. Re the name game, I'm familiar with Siwash and Osoyoos. Locals also know there's a difference in the way you say Mazama, Wash., and Mount Mazama in Oregon. I've been a "lurker" for some time at CW. LOVE this site. The comments are the best!
Um, I think that's pronounced crotch-em-boush, but I'm not trying to tell you how to do your job :) I AM trying to tell you that I do not think that looks appetizing. Spiders. Just spiders. Yucka.
North-east of Perth in Western Australia is a tiny town named Muchea. Residents (both of them, I think) call it Myoo-shay. Other versions I have heard include Mucky-er; Much-ear and Myoo-chee-ah. The latter was from the ABC weather presenter, who evidently had someone to help him correctly announce all the eastern states towns, but couldn't get a competent westralian. Unfortunately, EVERYone can get Innaloo right (In. A. Loo. Really. Toilet humour on a map. That's my country.) For more crude Australian place names, read "Yorkey's Knob".
Great post, but is was the note that killed me :)
Oh, please don't disparage the tower of majesty that is a creampuff tower by comparing it to monkey bread. I might not be able to pronounce the French word correctly, but the tower-o-cream puffs is one of the most delicious desserts I've ever eaten. So. not. monkey-bread-esque. Unless you consider any food that is eaten with the hands to be monkey-bread-esque. When done correctly (i.e. NOT wrapped in a sugar web spun by lactating wasps), it is one of the tastiest desserts I've ever had. And very hard to do correctly.
So to sum up: disparage the wreck, but not the inspiration. A true "CROCK-you-EAM-butchy" is a magical thing.
Martha Stewart did a Christmas special one year with special guest Julia Child and they showed how to build a croquembouche. Martha's, needless to say, is geometirically perfect, while Julia's is a more human jumbled stack of cream puffs. The look on Martha's face when she looks over at Julia's pile!
What's even better is that I found the video online on a Martha Stewart website - and she gave the name as "Crockenbush Pastry Dessert with Spun Sugar!"
http://www.marthastewart.com/1005691/crockenbush-pastry-dessert-spun-sugar
It clearly looks like a nasty nest of lactating spiders wasps, pulsating sticky spider egg sacs, or those icky net wormy things that grow in trees in the midwest/east. Having recently moved to the Denver area, I add onto the Lyons, Louisville, Buena Vista list, Kuni- not pronounced koon-ee, but koon-eye. Really? Also, my grandma was born in Buena Vista, so although I grew up in the midwest, I always knew she was born in byoonah vista, or puny buny, as it is also called:) There was an article in the Denver Post about these funky place name pronunciations in our state last year!!
Thanks again for another day and another laugh, CW!!
Are those twigs holding up the spun sugar cage? Maybe the guest could use them to break through to the puffs.
Its like they were trying to wreck this. All they had to do was pile up some cream puffs and wrap them in spun sugar. No flowers, no writing, no fancy pipework, no tier support structure... Its almost like edible modern art.
This reminds me of a story a read once, where two boys woke up and discovered that the entire town was suddenly devoid of all other people. Not like a disaster or zombie apocalypse had transpired, just no people. There was a description of food laid out on a table as if the inhabitants of the house just got up and walked out, never to return.
@kelticat...
What do you guys do when "Vawl" hungers...
The first thing I thought of when I saw the picture was Miss Havisham!! Glad to see others thought the same. And then after reading the comments I couldn't help but mention a small town near me named Bumpass. Not kidding. Named after a Bumpass, as in John Thomas Bumpass, which is supposedly an anglicization of the French bon pas. Hehehe
I believe this may have been a re-post from a few years ago...
...however, this is my absolute FAVOURITE post I have ever read on this site, and the first one I go to show friends when I tell them about it.
I hadn't been on this site for a long while, and one friend in particular sent me this video ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lPGYhOZDgc ...which lead me to showing her Cake Wrecks.
LO AND BEHOLD, my favourite post of ALL TIME was just on the first page.
So please, and now she's doubled over in laughter.
Well now I don't know if I should eat it, exterminate it with tons of fire, or just plain fall over laughing. Wow lol and to think I used to want to make one of those.. not anymore.
None of those cakes look as if they are made by professional french baker, who are the ones that make the Croquembouche (Pronounced crokembwsh {say the r with the back of your throat}) There are actually some very nice pictures of them Croquembouche's if you look on Google Images, some are even Sunday sweets worthy! (a Croquembouche is a french wedding cake after all, so you can be sure that if it is ugly or scary or just plain wrong, than it was made by an amateur.)
This comment was made just to clear things up
these cakes look like scenery from the Spider queen dungeon in Diablo III. I keep thinking Cydaea is going to pop out.
Ah, mispronunciation of ye olde Frenchie words. Brings back memories of all the wasted years taking French in school.
In the Thomas Crown Affair (remake), Pierce Brosnan looks dreamily into Rene Rouseau's eyes and say's "You're from Lima, Ohio." [European pronunciation--Leema]. Rene says nothing. If she were really an Ohioan, like me, she would have said "It's pronounced Lime-a."
The real appeal of a croquembouche was that the spun sugar web was suppose to be broken by hitting it with a sword. Now that would be a fun cake-cutting (I seriously considered this for my wedding).
We have a street called Junipero (this is SoCal, after all) and it has several pronunciations, including June-a-pear-o, Wan-i-pear-o, June-eye-peer-uh, Juniper (like the bush) - oh, etc.
Don't get me started on "Ximeno!"
Oh god, I'm not even particularly arachnophobia, and I wouldn't go near that thing.
Oh god, I'm not even particularly arachnophobic, and I wouldn't go near that thing.
I cannot believe that I have been reading this blog for so long! Wow. Can you please have one of your artist friends make shirts with lactating spider-wasps??? Pretty please? We will all wear them! :)
-shudder-
Okay, I have a crockery-books story!
My fiance studied at Le Cordon Bleu. During the pastry section, he had a French master chef for his teacher. NOTHING he did was right, no matter how well he did it. And let me tell you, his desserts cause people to melt. It wasn't that she was evil, it was that she was a boot camp drill sergeant to her students. She was determined to break them down and build up the BEST students she possibly could. Students she would be proud of.
Then came his cricket-free boots day...
They were given a time limit and told to make their best dessert. John rose to the challenge by deciding to risk it all by scrambling to make puff pastries, cream filling, AND the warmed honey-caramel for the "lace".
She glared at his mini (I think he said it was three layers) crook-an'-bucks for several minutes, then picked up his sample plate and tasted the single laced ball..
SHE SAID "I have nothing bad to say about this dish." AND WALKED ON!
He came home and celebrated! She had previously stated the cork-with-looks was her signature dessert while she was running her restaurant. And he had gained the closest thing to praise she gives on making it!
It's not easy to prononce, but not as difficult as you think : crock-em-bush ! Usully, we call this wedding cake "pièce montée"...
In France, we don't have the tradition of beautiful plastic-like cakes, but it comes. To me, they are beautiful, indeed, however I don't like fondant : lot of sugar, lot of colorants... well, it's just not my cup of tea, even if I think cake design is art !
This website is about cake appearance, but the pièces montées are not made to be beautiful. So they don't have to be judge for this ! Just taste it once, and then you could say if you like it or not... Well, to me it's not the best one, but I never criticize the cooking traditions of the others' culture...
Sorry for my english mistakes...
I think, that for the shown croquembouche wreck, your pronunciation may be the most appropriate...