Eclairs

I never thought I could make eclairs but since one of my friends offered them as a dessert in a dinner party and gave me her recipe (thanks, Becca!), I decided to try. I did made some adjustments that I found from several websites. I guess they turned out pretty good, taking into account that it was the first time I tried them.

First prepare the cream puffs:

150 ml milk or water (or mix 75 ml milk with 75 ml water)

75 g butter

150 g flour

1/4 tsp salt

2-3 eggs

 

# Combine butter and water in a saucepan. 

# Cook over medium heat until butter is melted and mixture is boiling.  Turn heat to very low.

# Add flour mixed with salt, all at once.  Stir vigorously until a ball forms in center of the pan (this takes about 3 to 5 minutes).  Remove from heat and let cool for about 20 minutes.

# When cooled, add 2 eggs, 1 at a time, beating hard after each addition (if you add eggs into hot dough, the eggs will coagulate and the dough rises only a bit – that’s what happened to my pastries). The final egg should be lightly beaten with a fork and added gradually.  The paste shoul then be stiff enough to stand in a peak when a spoon is withdrawn.  Therefore it is sometimes necessary to add slightly less – or even more – eggs. 

# Spoon the dough onto a cookie sheet and take into account they’ll puff up considerably while baking. 

# Baked dough at 190 degrees C until pastries are golden brown and no beads of moisture show (about 15-20 minutes).  Don’t open the oven door in the first half of the baking – otherwise the pastries will loose its shape and turn flat.

# When pastries are all nice and golden, turn the heat off. Stick the point of a small knife into the sides of pastries and leave small pastries in oven 10 minutes longer, large pastries 15-20 minutes more.  This will allow steam inside to evaporate and help prevent sogginess.

When pastries are in the oven, prepare vanilla cream:

 

1 tbsp flour 

75 ml milk

1/8 tsp salt

2 tbsp sugar

1 egg yolk

1 tsp vanilla

 

# Combine flour with the 25 ml milk.  Stir until smooth.  Gradually add the remaining milk. 

# Place in a saucepan and stir in salt and sugar.  Cook over medium heat, stirring until mixture thickens. 

# Pour egg yolk into saucepan, stirring briskly.  Return pan to low heat for a few minutes to thinken a little more, but be careful not to let the sauce boil. 

# Remove from heat and add vanilla.  Cool as quickly as possible, and stir before using.

For the chocolate sauce I used the following recipe, which turned out to be pretty good (but there are thousands of other variations you can use – just put ”Chocolate glaze” into google):

 

50 g bitter chocolate

100 ml milk

45 g warm butter

100 ml powdered sugar

1/8 tsp salt

 

# Melt chocolate and cool. Add milk, powdered sugar, salt and melted butter.

# Stir properly until smooth and cool.

Now you have everything ready to finish the eclairs. Cut off the top part of each pastry, and scoop out any of the warm doughy bits.  Fill each pastry up with vanilla cream, then put the pastry’s little hat back on.  The chocolate sauce is then spooned over each pastry. 

Seems like a lot of work? It is not actually…