éclairs

A french dessert…Nous aimons éclair!

First we would like to wish you all a happy,  healthy and joy for the NEW YEAR 2016! (we know a month too late, so sorry hihi) With full of great achievements and of course lots of baking and traveling with family and friends! New opportunities and chances, so go for it!

This time we made these delicious éclairs! An éclair is a French dessert made from choux dough which you also can use for cream puffs, beignets etc. Filled with cream or custard, topped with chocolate ganache. We used whipped cream but custard is delicious too. In French, éclair means ‘ flash of lightning’ because its eaten quickly. Yes we can understand why…cause its YUM! The difference between this  dough and any other is, you don’t use yeast or baking powder/soda. But you use steam instead!

We got this recipe from a friend Laura, her dad used to work in a bakery. So it should be good, and yes as you can see it turned out nicely!

So here you go, an easy but delicious éclair recipe!

Ingredients

100 gram butter
100 ml milk
100 ml water
100 gram flower (sifted)
4 egg
pinch of salt
1/4 tea spoon vanilla sugar

Filling
Whipped cream

Chocolate ganache

200 gram chocolate
155 ml cream

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees
2. Put the butter, milk, salt, vanilla sugar and water in a pan and bring it to boil.
3. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sifted flower, mix it strongly with a wooden spoon and return the pan to the heat (low).
4. Stir it for about 2 min untill you see that some of the dough(forms a stiff ball) sticks to the bottom of the pan
5. Transfer the dough to a bowl, let it cool of a lil bit and add 1 egg one at a time with a wooden spoon or a mixer. ( Don’t get scared if it looks like the dough doesn’t come together, just keep mixing) until you get this smooth batter.
6. Cover baking pan with parchment paper.
7. Put the batter in a pastry bag and pipe the dough into long strips
8. Bake it for about 15 min and reduce heat to 165 degrees for 20 min
9. Remove eclairs and prick each with a skewer on both side to release steam and let it cool of. (here you can make holes in it to or like us cut it in half)

10. Transfer the whipped cream into a piping bag and put it on the éclairs
11. Chop the chocolate.
12. Place cream in a pan over medium low heat till its hot (not boiling)
13. Pour the cream over the chopped chocolate and let it rest for 2 min.
14. Stir it until you get this smooth chocolate sauce.
15. Dip the éclairs into the chocolate ganache
16. Top it of with anything you like

That’s it enjoy!!