Chocolate and coffee eclairs

As I'm typing up this blog post with a cup of tea at hand and a dozen eclairs in the fridge, I know there's no possible way I could even stomach eating one. Though eclairs are held in just as high esteem as croissants when it comes to French pastry, like many things I bake in bulk, there's just no way I can handle more than a taste.

Yes, the soft choux dough full of pastry cream and topped with gooey fondant is beckoning, but thank goodness the calls of temptation fall on deaf ears. Perhaps I'm not so excited about them because I've made choux pastry countless times. From cream puffs, to ice cream filled profiteroles, to a croquembouche, throwing together some choux dough is more than familiar. It's times like these that I wish I could teleport pastries.

When I think of eclairs, they slightly make me nostalgic of the custard filled chocolate bars of my childhood. In a sense, they're a sophisticated donut replacement, but yet... not quite. I also think about the eight dollar atrocity I saw at a bakery in Mountain View, which was about four times the size of my eclair, but filled with whipped cream and strawberries. Oh the horror.



Anyhow, today we made chocolate and coffee eclairs, starting with a simple dough made out of water, butter, sugar, salt, eggs and flour.



The flour is added to the boiling water/butter mixture to create a thick paste, and removed from the heat once it pulls away from the pan. Then eggs are slowly added until the dough is smooth and all eggs are incorporated.

We then piped the dough out using a pastry bag and tip, and popped them in the oven until they came out looking like tiny hot dog buns. Mine weren't completely straight. Sadly, my morning coffee habit is resulting in jittery hands.




After cooling the eclair shells were filled with chocolate and coffee pastry cream and dipped in chocolate and coffee fondant. I don't particularly like the fondant, as I'm accustomed to using ganache. Ganache is richer and tastier, and in my opinion easier to work with, although it may not be "un vrai eclair". But then again, I guess it doesn't really matter if I'm not eating any of them.