Baked on August 12, 2018
Here’s to blog post #1. Feels so good to be getting this challenge started. Thanks for reading and joining me on this adventure. I thought long and hard about what seemed like the best creation to try first. I wanted to pick something familiar to my taste buds but not familiar to my baking chops that would also test more than one technique. Chocolate Éclairs seemed liked a perfect fit.
I will be the first to admit that I have been living a year-long blonde moment. Until preparation for this challenge, I had only heard the name for the dough used in éclairs, Choux Pastry, spoken on cooking shows. The French word Choux sounds exactly like the English word Shoe. But in my book, Shoe Pastry would be a completely appropriate term for the dough that creates a hollow internal space surrounded by protective outer shell.
In the real world, Choux is the French word for cabbage. A quick internet search reveals that the first Choux Pastry dough was created in the 14th century and perfected over the next four hundred years. In the 18th century, a pattisier used the dough to create round pastries that resembled heads of cabbage and thus were called Choux Buns. The recipe has continued to be perfected into the dough we know today.
Now that our little history lesson is out of the way, it’s time to "d’éclair" my love for baking! Let’s get started.
First, I needed to make the choux pastry, pipe it into logs and bake it. The first step was to bring the butter, water and milk to a boil. I then immediately added all the flour and vigorously stirred as the mixture cooked on the stove. I continued stirring until the mixture balled up and pulled away from the sides of the pan.
Moving this flour mixture to my mixing bowl, I slightly cooled the dough by beating mixture for about a minute. I then added the eggs one at a time, completely incorporating before adding the next. I recognized that I would need to add eggs until the batter came to the appropriate consistency. To accommodate this, I kept the last egg separated from the first four and whisked it to combine the white and yolk. After adding the first four eggs, I added a small amount of the whisked egg at a time until the dough had a pearly sheen and separating the dough between two fingers created peaks that slightly softened after a few moments.
I then piped the dough into 3.5” long logs using a large piping tip. Prior to baking in the oven, I applied an egg wash of equal parts egg and milk with a pinch of salt.
While in the oven, the high liquid content of the Choux Pastry dough creates steam inside the pastry resulting in the large internal air pocket. The high gluten content of the bread flour used in the dough also allows the elastic dough to expand around this air pocket and hold its shape.
After about the first 30 minutes in the oven, the outer shell of the éclair was created, but then needed to dry out in order to hold its shape when later filling with cream. To accomplish this, I lowered the oven temperature by about 50 degrees F and continued baking for 20 more minutes. I pulled the éclairs out when the inside of the cracks in the dough created during the baking process were no longer yellow.
While the éclair shells were cooling I next created the vanilla cream filling. The Vanilla Dominant Cream filling consists of first creating pastry cream, setting it with gelatin and then folding it into whipped cream. To create the pastry cream, I first brought sugar, butter and milk to a boil to dissolve the sugar. Meanwhile, in a separate bowl, cornstarch, sugar and milk were whisked together followed by addition of eggs. This egg mixture was then added back to the boiling milk mixture and whisked until thickened. While the pastry cream was still warm, I mixed the gelatin into the pastry cream. The recipe called for 2 gelatin sheets, which I could not find in my local grocery store. I substituted the 2 gelatin sheets with 0.5 tablespoons of gelatin powder mixed with 2 tablespoons of warm water before adding to the pastry cream. The resulting gelatin set pastry cream contained small lumps that I removed by straining the mixture. While straining the pastry cream, I whipped the heavy cream into soft peaks and placed in the refrigerator to stay cold. Before folding the whipped cream into the pastry cream, the pastry cream needed to be cooled to 75 degrees F over an ice bath. While the pastry cream cooled, I used a skewer to poke small holes in both ends of the éclair shells.
With our Vanilla Dominant Cream filling now ready, I loaded the cream into a piping bag fitted with the smallest round piping tip. I then piped the filling into the éclair shells until I saw just a bit of cream come out of the holes. I wiped away any excess that emerged. I thought it would require filling the éclair shells from both ends, but was surprised to see that the filling readily filled the whole cavity when applied just from one end. The filled éclairs were then chilled for several hours in the refrigerator in order to set the piped cream.
The final step was to create the chocolate topping. The recipe called for melting fondant and dark chocolate together to create a glaze. Though the recipe called for adding corn syrup to thin the fondant/chocolate mixture, after adding half a bottle (!!!) of corn syrup this chocolate mixture still maintained a sticking and stringy consistency that would be impossible to spread on top of each éclair. I ended up pouring the mixture onto some wax paper and when cooled it resembled a gigantic tootsie roll!
My plan B was to mix up a thin version of chocolate ganache. Dipping each éclair carefully into the ganache, I created a thin layer of chocolate on the top of each éclair.
Voilà! These éclairs are ready to eat!
These éclairs were super tasty but I also learned a lot:
1. About half of my éclairs cracked much more than I would have liked and caused some minor leaking when filled with the cream. I researched this phenomenon online and many blogs mentioned to ways to avoid the cracking. First, you can sift your flour before cooking the dough to avoid unnecessary lumps. Second, the inclusion of salt in the dough when cooking also improves its consistency. Looking back at the recipe, I discovered I had forgotten to include the pinch of salt in my dough!
2. I’ve always hated fondant… so why start now?!