Chocolate Eclairs

One of the regulars on QQ keeps bugging me about making eclairs.  Never mind that she lives in another state and would never eat them.  Or that even the smallest choux recipe makes a lot for one person, and a filled eclair doesn't have a long shelf life.  What it really came down to was I didn't read the artichoke soup recipe well enough before buying a pint of cream and had most of the bottle left.  Might as well fill an eclair with it.

I decided to cut the previous choux recipe down to a single egg and find out how much it made.  Also, I didn't have a lot of eggs and was still going to make cream for the eclairs.  It turns out that the single-egg version of creme mousseline makes way more than four eclairs's worth of filling.  I'm going to post what I estimate to be the correct batch sizes.  Or you can do what I did and eat the rest of the filling as pudding.

Choux Bodies

1/2 C (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 C water
1/2 tsp kosher salt
1 C flour
4 eggs

1.  Preheat oven to 375º.  Line two baking sheets with parchment or Silpat.

2.  In a saucepan, bring water, salt, and butter to a boil over medium high heat.  Completely melt the butter.

3.  Remove saucepan from the heat and dump in the flour all at once.  Stir vigorously with a wooden spoon until all the flour is worked in and the mixture is smooth, about 3-4 minutes.  Set aside to cool enough that an egg won't immediately cook in it, about 5 minutes.

4.  One at a time, beat in eggs.  It's going to look soupy for a moment each time, but keep stirring with that wooden spoon.

5.  Fit a pastry bag with a large round tip, or fill a sturdy plastic freezer bag and snip off a corner.  Pipe out 4" long and 1-1/2" wide bars.  They mostly expand straight up in the oven, so you can put them fairly close together.

6.  Once the pan is full, immediately place in the oven to bake.  Start checking around 25 minutes, but they will probably take 30-35 to get the light golden color.  Remove from oven and thoroughly cool before proceeding to the next step.  You can even pre-bake these and freeze them for another day.

Glaze

1/2 C semi-sweet chocolate
*1/4 C heavy cream

1.  Place both ingredients in a microwave-safe container.

2.  Heat in microwave on half power (defrost) in 30-second increments, stirring between.  Once smooth, ganache is ready to use.

3.  Glaze top of eclairs with ganache and set aside for it to harden, about 30 minutes.  Eclairs can still be frozen at this point, but the ganache will be sticky when it defrosts.

Filling and Finishing

1 egg yolk
2 Tb sugar
1/2 Tb cornstarch
1/2 Tb cocoa powder
1/2 C milk
1/8 tsp vanilla
*1/3 C heavy cream

1.  Beat together yolk and sugar in a small bowl and set aside.

2.  In a small saucepan, stir together cocoa powder, cornstarch, and milk.  Bring to a simmer over medium-low heat and continue to stir until the mixture thickens.  Pour some of it into the egg yolk mixture and whisk it in to temper the egg.  Pour that back into the main mixture and continue to stir constantly until the mixture is thick and glossy, about 3 minutes.  Remove from heat and chill, about 2 hours.

3.  Once cream base is cool, whip cream and vanilla to firm peaks.  I discovered that the hand electric beater fits into the small metal bowl I use to beat eggs for omelets in.  It was perfect for whipping a small amount of cream, much better than a stand mixer.  Beat in chocolate cream until fully combined.

4.  Fill the eclairs no more than 4 hours before serving.  Fit a pastry bag or sturdy freezer bag with a medium serrated pastry tip and fill with the chocolate cream.  Use that to puncture the end of an eclair.  Gently squeeze in the filling.  The inside of the pastry should be full of air that the cream will fill.

5.  Chill eclairs until ready to serve, but do not freeze them.  The filling won't defrost at the same rate as the pastry, and everything is going to get soggy.  Eclairs are best slightly cool or room temperature.

Makes about 16

Difficulty rating :-0