What’s the most difficult food creation you can think of? How about the ones you’ve made (regardless of degree of success 
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Inspired by the difficult cooking thread.
I’ve never attempted to make croissants from scratch, but watching other people do it… ugh, looks so labor-intensive!
The one recipe that I found inordinately challenging is for macarons, those delicate little french meringue cookies. I’ve finally pulled together a fairly successful strategy, but I’ve had multiple failures (cookies don’t develop good “feet,” cookies are impossible to get off of the parchment paper, cookies are too crunchy, etc)
Can’t think of the name of it. You make a dough and then stretch it until it’s an enormous paper-thin disc and then roll it up with apple chunks, walnuts, and such.
If we can count things we’ve never done, I think “Bearding the dragon” is widely accepted as the most difficult cooking skill. ( basically folding and stretching noodle dough, until you have a mass of noodles as thin as strands of thread.
That pies inside of cakes monstrosity that exists out there… The pumpercaken? I forgot what it is called… but it’s the Turducken of desserts.
I occasionally make a four layer chocolate cake - the bottom layer is a flourless chocoalte cake. The next three are chocolate mousse, white chocolate mousse, and dark chocolate mousse.
It’s a bit annoying to make, and take a long time because you need to make each mousse layer separately and let it set up.
My dobos torte has a variable number of layers, depending on how many I can lift off my springform pan mostly intact.
And I used to make simple turnover pastries for a charity gig. I always ruined the first batch while I played with my methods to get them to seal properly.
I like baking, but it’s usually easy stuff.
Molasses cookies (gingerbread cookies) take a few days for me to make, because I make the dough one day (and refrigerate it so it’s easier to work with), cut out and bake the cookies the next day, and then decorate them the next day (the decorating takes a long time because I have to wait for the icing to set.)
It’s not really all that difficult, just tedious.
Puff pastry and croissants from scratch are extremely labor intensive and macarons are very technically difficult. There are a few recipes I’ve done in the past that I refuse to make again even though they were successful. Martha Stewarts Meyer Lemon Souffles are at the top of that list. Individual souffles baked in hollowed out lemons. I also made her inside out German chocolate cake which was amazing, but since it took hours to make I don’t think I’ll ever do it again.
I don’t mind a challenge, but sometimes the reward, even though awesome, isn’t worth the effort to do it yourself.
Almost ten years ago, for a wedding my boss was catering, I, as the baker, made two croquembouche.
These are pyramid shaped confections made out of filled cream puffs dipped in boiling sugar syrup. Once you get going you can’t stop, or change what you have done. Heaven forbid it gets humid on the way to delivery.
Croquembouche means, I am told, “crunch in the mouth” in French, because the hot sugar syrup hardens into a cripy shell. This is what holds the pile of puffs together. Here are some images of the creation.
Once a year I make a cookie called “Sarah Bernhardt’s”. Time consuming, multi-layered. and finger burning. The first layer is almond macaroon, the second is truffle, third and last is hand dipping it in chocolate. I grew up eating these, they literally melt in your mouth and they are sold by the lbs. at St. Moritz Bakery in Greenwich, CT.
The Cherpumple. I’ve never made one, but it doesn’t look that difficult–just a little time consuming, unless you’re at an oven store and can use multiple ovens to bake everything simultaneously.
(Posted mostly because Charles Phoenix is just adorable.)
Are you talking about stack pies? Stack pies were an old Kentucky tradition, wherein chess pies were brought to a get-together, then stacked up and sealed together with caramel, then sliced like a cake. I have no idea what they may have morphed into today, but there is a sound tradition behind them.
Baker: that desert looks like a freaking nightmare for even an accomplished baker. Hell, I read the instructions for croissants and it gives me nightmares; I can’t imagine tackling something like a croquembouche. Why isn’t that two or three words, by the way? If it’s croque embouche, it translates roughly as “fattening crunch”, although I’m sure a direct translation doesn’t work in this case.
I made croissants and puff pastry last Christmas with homemade cultured butter, and they came out awesome. I’ve done both again on a couple occasions since. I was fairly intimidated when reading the recipe, but once I was actually in the process of doing it, it didn’t seem nearly as hard as I thought it was going to be. Very labor intensive, though! Once you’re into the laminating process, the dough is my favorite in terms of ease of handling, as long as you’re working in a cool room and chuck it back in the fridge before it gets too warm.
Do you ship? I used to work in Greenwich and treated myself to Small Sarahs occasionally (also their buttercream frogs.) I’ve thought I might try making them one day. I keep seeing pictures of macarons and think I’ll give that a try.
My sister and I daydream about vacationing together somewhere with a wonderful kitchen (magically stocked with everything) and trying some intricate recipes.
At the top of my Someday I’ll Make list is a Torte St. Honore
Strudel.
I’ve been meaning to do a Christmas croquembouche for years, and always ended up too hassled to do it. It seems like the real trick is to be methodical about getting everything done before you start to assemble… and eating it right away.
I think that blowing and sculpting sugar is probably pretty hard. I have no intention of ever trying. The hardest thing I’ve ever done with sugar was make peanut brittle.
My Beloved, you should tell them the whole process for making those little [del]bastards[/del]beauties-you might just win the thread. 
The most I’ve done with sugar is lollipops. I did corn, crab, lobster, and alligator shapes for a Crawfish party one year. I was going to use candy-corn flavoring for the corn shaped ones, but I didn’t think anyone would get the joke.
It’s embarassing to admit but caramel has always defeated me utterly. Whether it’s too hard, too soft, grainy, or crystallized, I’m always fucking it up somehow. Yes, I do use a calibrated candy thermometer. sigh.
As my Beloved requested the whole process of make the Sarah Bernhardt’s. First you blend together almond paste, sugar, egg whites, almond extract and salt. when it’s all blended put into a piping bag, then you pipe out 1 inch circles, and then bake. Stage 2 is making the truffle. over a double boiler you blend in semi sweet chocolate, heavy whipping cream, unsalted butter and dark rum, stir till smooth and cool in the fridge to set. when the macaroons are cool and the filling is set you place that in a piping bag, pipe onto the cookies, put the cookies back in the fridge to reset the filling. When the filling has set, on a double boiler you mix semi sweet chocolate and Crisco until smooth, then you dip the cookies into the melted chocolate, put them back into the fridge to set and keep in fridge till you need them.