Girl Behind the Apron: Éclair Madness!

My patisserie & baking 101 final practical was last thursday, and we had to make eclairs, fruit tartlets, and strassburger cookies. I'm going to miss that class, making random cookies, cakes & pastries daily. Im ecstatic about my new breads class though, because nothing beats the smell of freshly baked bread at 7 AM. Yes, 7 AM since I switched my schedule to 6-9:30 AM. I keep telling myself its only for 6 weeks.

So for the practical I made two batches of pate a choux ([eclair paste] which yields about 50 eclair shells, however I only needed to present my best four. There isn't enough pastry cream or time in class to fill all of the shells, so instead of just throwing them in the freezer, I made some fresh pastry cream at home and went to town.

Typically eclairs are dipped in semi-sweet chocolate, but I only had milk chocolate couverture [coating chocolate] so that's what I used, and I was really pleased with the results.

So 50+ mini eclairs is just way too many, so in the freezer they go just waiting to be eaten. They freeze beautifully and defrost almost instantly, so you always can have a fancy french dessert to impress your family/friends with.

Mini Eclairs
(adapted from Professional Baking, 5th Edition)

Pate a choux
- 8 oz water
- 4 oz butter
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp salt
- 6 oz bread flour
- 10 oz eggs (about 5 eggs)[variable: have 3 cracked, 1 scrambled, and 1 standby]

Pastry cream recipe here

Coating chocolate, or regular chocolate- melted over bain marie
White chocolate for drizzling (optional)

Preheat oven to 425F
For the dough: In a pot- bring the first 4 ingredients to a boil. Off the heat, add the flour, mix until it forms a shiny ball.
Let it cool down to 110-120F. Add first egg, mix vigorously until egg is incorporated. Add eggs one at a time, until consistency is correct [*Tip: take some dough between thumb and index finger, if you can stretch it 2-3 inches without it ripping, dough is done)
Put in pipping bag, and using an 806 round tip pipe 3 inch logs onto parchment lined sheet pan.
Brush with egg wash, and smooth down 'tail' from piping.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425F, reduce heat to 375F and bake until dry [will sound hollow inside], about 5 minutes.
Let shells cool before filling.

To fill eclairs: An injector tip (a bismarck 230) is the easiest to use when filling, if not use a round 1/8 inch tip. Fill pastry bag with custard.

Make two small holes in the bottom of each shell, and carefully fill until heavy [1-2 oz]. Do not fill too quickly or overfill or the shells with burst. Wipe off excess cream from bottom.