Croquembouche, a tower of caramel-glued cream puffs

Bring the water, butter, salt and sugar to a boil in a saucepan.

Off the heat, add all the flour at once and stir hard until it leaves the sides of the pan clean and a film forms on the bottom. This is the panade.

Make a depression in the hot panade and beat in the eggs one at a time, letting it cool enough first that the egg does not cook.

Whether the sixth egg goes in depends on consistency: lifted on a spoon the paste should hold its shape, and dropped on a plate it should hold its shape. Use it while still warm or it becomes too stiff.

Pipe mounds one inch in diameter and one inch high onto parchment lined pans, spaced an inch and a half apart.

Beat one egg with half a teaspoon of cold water and paint the tops, pushing them into shape, and clean up any egg that falls on the pan since it stops them rising.

Bake at 425F on the lower and upper racks for the first 20 to 30 minutes.

Turn the oven down to 350F, rotate and swap the pans, and after 10 minutes turn the oven off and leave the door open to cool them.

For the filling, bring the butter, water and sugar to a boil, turn the heat down and stir in the flour until it no longer sticks to the sides and films the bottom.

Make a well, add the egg and stir hard so it does not cook.

Add the milk and bring to a simmer, adding more milk and sugar to reach a pourable filling consistency, then a little vanilla, and take it off the heat.

Fill only some of the puffs through a piping bag with a nozzle, since filled shells go soggy after a few hours, and leave the rest empty for the inside of the tower.

For the caramel, boil the sugar, corn syrup and water until the sugar has completely dissolved, then cover for three to four minutes so the condensing steam washes the sugar crystals down the sides.

Uncover when the bubbles thicken and boil several minutes more, swirling the pan slowly, until the syrup turns an amber golden caramel brown.

Pour the caramel out of the hot pan into another vessel so it stops cooking; he burned one batch and made it again.

Dip the base of each puff in caramel and cement it to the tray, starting with the biggest and with the unfilled ones, then caramel the tops and add each next layer leaning inward, building the cone by eye.

Spoon and dribble caramel lines over the whole tower, then dip a fork in the caramel and wave it around to spin threads over it.