So, I'm ready for some dessert: vanilla eclairs - with chocolate on top! To be honest, you could flavour your eclairs however you want with this recipe, try out some lemon meringue or peppermint (crumbled candy canes on top for Christmas?) or espresso...
Three of the main skills used in this recipe are making puff pastry, tempering, and piping. If you want to practice these techniques, this is a great recipe to use. Even if you're not too experienced, this recipe is super forgiving (if you pipe your eclairs wrong, you can always scoop it back and I won't tell).
What's cool about puff pastry is that hole in middle, that you can fill with anything. In this case, we used custard and mixed it with whipped cream, but you could use just whipped cream to make some classic cream puffs or you could fill your pastry with pudding.
To make eclairs, the egg yolks need to be tempered. Basically, if you don't temper your eggs and just put them straight into the hot milk, they will scramble and leave you with scrambled eggs in milk, not custard. Tempering brings the eggs to the temperature of the hot milk slowly, ensuring they don't scramble. When you temper, you need to take it slow. It isn't a problem if you temper too slowly, but if you temper too fast, it will ruin your custard.
Three Tips to Make the Perfect Custard Every Time:
1. Add the hot milk into the whisked egg, and not the other way around. If you pour the egg into the saucepan with the milk in it, the hot metal of the saucepan will cause the eggs to cook rather than temper.
2. Pour slowly. If you add all the milk at once, the temperature of the egg will rise so fast, your custard won't temper.
3. Whisk constantly. Don't stop. If you stop, the temperature range between the hot milk and the egg will be too great, cooking the egg. If you are really feeling like your arm is gonna fall off, use a hand mixer (that's what we did!), or recruit your fave kitchen partner to whisk every once in a while.
Piping: every cake decorator's joy (or nightmare)! Basically, the key is to apply pressure from the top of the piping bag, rather than squeezing the middle, so that you get consistent pressure and you won't run out of whatever you are piping halfway. When we piped our dough, we quickly learned that you have to apply the same pressure throughout, because you can visibly see bumps in the piped dough when you try the squeeze-and-release method. Take your time and apply the same pressure the whole time for the most even piping result, and if you make a mistake, grab a spatula and scrape the dough back into the bowl and try again. Once you've piped your eclair, baked it, and filled it (more piping, but you don't really see it because its inside, so if you mess up it isn't terrible), you get to dip the top - or you can pipe again like I did for a cleaner finish. This time, you get the privilege of piping however you want. I used a round piping tip and a zigzag method for fun to cover the top of the eclair.
Comments