Over Thanksgiving, I went up to my sister’s place in the pacific northwest, where we partook of the noblest of all family traditions:  Christmas cookie making.   We do spritzes, bourbon balls, gingerbread, etc.  All the cookies we were raised making.  But this year I decided we have to do something else too.  Something different. You gotta try something new every once in a while, right? Something that looks appetizing in a magazine, like this:

(I apologize for all picture quality, they were taken on my phone)

It’s called a croquembouche, a tower of what (after 5 hours of cooking) turned out to be cream-filled donut holes held together by caramel.  The dough was pretty tasty, puffed up nicely, the cream filling was DELISH, and my version is not magazine worthy, but it still looks pretty decent:

But here’s one thing that the magazine didn’t tell me:  Caramel is CEMENT.  Also, in that constructing these delicious little cream filled poufs, I’m constructing something purely decorative (why they had me pipe in cream then I do not know) because its impossible to pull apart.  Case in point:

Yes, I’m holding this thing upside down.  I’m gonna need a hairdryer and a chisel to get it off the plate.

Oh well, you gotta try something new every once in a while, right?