Daring Bakers - Eclair!

This was a joy and delight to make, bake and eat!

This month's recipe was inspired by Pierre Herme's Chocolate Eclairs. While I'm a huge fan of chocolate, I felt the chocolate filling would be a little much, so I did adapt this recipe a bit. First, I chose to make a plain pastry cream. Second, after examining the recipe, I did not want to make 1.5 cups of chocolate sauce only to need a few tablespoons for the Glaze.

So, I scoured a few cookbooks to find some alternatives. I used both the pastry cream and the chocolate glaze recipe from Martha Stewart's Baking. I also took her queue and lightened the pastry cream with whipped cream. I was really pleased that I had done so.

I did use Pierre's Cream Puff Dough recipe. Here is the mise en place.

For those who have not made cream puff dough, also known as pate a choux, it's kind of a weird process. First you cook milk and butter, then dump in all the flour at once and beat it vigorously.

Then you dump the still-hot dough into a mixer or food processor and add the eggs.

Once the dough is together, you pipe it to form cream puffs, or in this case chubby finger-shaped logs for eclairs. Then into the oven to bake until golden brown and delicious. They will puff, sort of like popovers.





Eclair shells!








I'm getting better a photographing step-by-step (sorry if NKOTB got into your head there). However, I didn't do so well in capturing images of the pastry cream or chocolate glaze.





Here is the mise en place for the pastry cream.











Very standard pastry cream recipe. Uses cornstarch for the thickener. When this had chilled it was pretty stiff. I stirred it quite a bit to break it up some and then folded in approximately 1 cup of heavy cream whipped to almost stiff peaks. I folded in the whipped cream in 3 parts.





And because I'm sure you would enjoy some photos of chopped chocolate...here you go! Please don't drool on the keyboard. :)




Finally, I cut open each eclair shell with a serrated knife. I scooped about two tablespoons (or so) of the lightened pastry cream on the bottom, placed the lid on top and then glazed with the chocolate sauce. They were delicious!










I will say that for me this wasn't so much a challenge. I have made cream puffs as well as profiteroles in the past. I find pate a choux to be very versatile as well as delicious. However, these eclairs were so delicious, I'm glad they were part of the challenge.