Today on Sugar Spun Run I'll be showing you how to make eclairs.
Hey Sugar Spun Bakers, Sam here and today I'm really excited to share this Eclair recipe with
you. Now if you have made my cream puffs this is essentially the same recipe.
We're going to be piping our pastry a little bit differently. We're going to be
putting chocolate on top, but if you've made my cream puffs before you've got
this, no problem. Now the first thing we're going to want to do is we'll make
our pastry cream. Pastry cream needs to set in the fridge for about two to four
hours before you can use it. So ideally you will start this early in the morning,
or the day before. To make our pastry cream let's head over to the stovetop
where you're going to need a medium sized saucepan. You are going to need 1
cup each of milk and heavy cream, and we'll add these into our saucepan.
Along with 1/3 cup of granulated sugar and just 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
You'll want to stir everything together and we're just going to cook this mixture over medium
heat until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture comes to a simmer.
Once this is simmering we're going to remove it from the heat and set it aside.
You'll want to let the milk mixture cool for at least 10 minutes. While that's cooling we
can go ahead and grab our eggs. You're going to need five egg yolks for this
recipe; just the yolks. You're going to want to put them in a medium or large sized bowl.
Make sure this is a heat proof bowl. We're going to add three
tablespoons of granulated sugar in with our egg yolks and we're going to whisk
this vigorously for about 15 seconds, or until the sugar just begins to dissolve.
It's not going to dissolve completely That's okay.
Now we're going to add three tablespoons of cornstarch and we'll whisk this into our egg mixture until it's slightly thickened.
Now the next thing we need to do for our pastry cream is we need to combine our
milk mixture, our very hot milk mixture, with our egg yolk mixture, and we need to
do this without cooking or egg yolks. So the way we'll do this is, we'll temper
our egg yolks, and we're going to gradually add some of this milk mixture
in with egg yolks. Now you do want to wait at least 10 minutes from taking the
milk off of the stovetop, and we are going to add just about 1/3 of this
mixture into the egg yolk mixture, while whisking constantly.
Try to drizzle this slowly while you're whisking; that way your eggs slowly come to temperature.
Ideally you would pour that even a little more slowly than I did. This pot is just really heavy.
You know it would be really nice if they made these pots with
spouts. That way the cream didn't run down the side.
Alright now we will gradually whisk in, as gradually as possible, whisk in the remainder of our cream mixture.
Alright that was messy but we did it. Make sure everything is nicely whisked together.
We should have no cooked egg in here.
Now we're actually going to pour this egg mixture back into our saucepan and we're going to return this to the stovetop over medium heat.
We're going to cook this mixture over medium heat while whisking constantly. We're going to whisk until the mixture begins to thicken.
Once it's thickened you'll want to remove it from the stove top and
we are going to pour it into a new clean bowl. Now I highly recommend pouring the
mixture through a fine mesh strainer. You want to do this just in case any of the
egg has cooked a little bit that way you strain out any bits of cooked egg that might be in there.
Now we're going to add four tablespoons of butter. Ideally you should use
softened butter, and we are going to add this to our pastry cream one tablespoon
at a time, whisking after each addition until the butter is melted.
And if your pastry cream seems a little lumpy at this stage, once you've added all of your
butter, it should be nice and smooth. So don't panic.
I love this pastry cream. A lot of Eclair recipes use pudding mix instead, and it's
just not the same as homemade pastry cream.
Once all your butter is melted, we're going to add one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract. Whisk that in as well.
Okay our pastry cream is nice and smooth. It's looking perfect right about now, but
as I mentioned, it does need to cool completely and chill before you can use
it to fill your eclairs. First what we're going to do is we're going to take a
piece of plastic wrap and we're going to press this directly and into the surface
of the pastry cream. This is going to prevent a skin from forming. We're going
to let our pastry cream sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes and
then we'll pop it in the fridge where we will let it cool completely. This is gonna take about two to four hours.
Once your pastry cream has chilled we can go
ahead and start preparing our choux pastry. This is what we're going to be
putting that pastry cream inside. The first thing you'll do is pre-heat your
oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit. Next we're going to head back to the stovetop.
We are going to need a medium sized saucepan, and to that saucepan we are going to add one cup of water.
And 1/2 cup, or one stick of unsalted butter. and
you're going to want to cut this into 8 pieces before adding it to the water.
We're also going to add 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Now turn your stove top heat to
medium and we're going to cook this until the butter is melted and the mixture begins to boil.
Once the contents of your pot are boiling, we are going to add one cup of all-purpose flour.
Now turn your stovetop heat down to medium-low and we're going
to stir this flour into the water, and you're going to continue to stir until
the moisture is absorbed and the flour is forming a nice ball. You also want to
make sure that you don't have any flour lumps in your pastry dough. So if you see
any, just use your spatula to smash them against the side of the pot. Just to work them out of there.
So once this dough starts to form a ball and most of the
moisture has been absorbed we are going to go ahead and remove it from the heat.
Now continue to stir this for a couple minutes. You want it to cool down a
little bit before we add our eggs because we do not want to cook our eggs.
I'll usually let this rest for about five minutes or so before proceeding, and
I'll usually stir it most of that time, just to help encourage it to cool down.
Now at this point we can add our eggs. You are going to need four large eggs,
and we're going to add them one at a time, stirring really well after each
addition until the mixture is nice and velvety and smooth.
Now we'll want to go ahead and pipe our choux pastry into nice Eclair shapes. So
to do this I'm going to put mine in a piping bag that's been fitted with a
large Ateco 808 tip. If you don't have this tip you can just use a piping
bag and snip the end off, or even use a larger ziploc bag with one of the corners snipped off.
I'm going to drop it in my piping bag.
Usually I make my husband hold the bag open for me while I add the pastry dough, but he
doesn't want to be on camera today so you guys just get me. It also helps
sometimes to just set your piping bag in a large glass and pour the pastry into that.
We're just gonna do things the hard way today.
Watch the bottom because it's going to want to start to leak out. Okay so what we're going to do now is we're
going to pipe this onto a baking sheet that's been lined with parchment paper.
You are probably going to need two baking sheets. Make sure they can both
fit into your oven because it works best if you can bake the pastry at the same
time, or bake all of it at the same time. I have a really large baking sheet if
you can see that. So I'm going to be piping all of mine onto this.
Now I'm going to be piping strips that are about four to five inches long.
I'll also usually make each end slightly wider than the center.
You will want to give these some space as you pipe them because they are going to puff up in the
oven. You should get about 12 eclairs out of this recipe.
Alright we're gonna go transfer this to our 400 degree Fahrenheit preheated oven where they're
going to need to bake for 30 minutes. When they're finished baking they should
be a nice golden brown color, and they should appear dry on the surface.
Now what we're going to do is we're going to need to move pretty quickly here. You're
going to want to use a sharp knife and we are going to cut a slit at the end of
each Eclair. Now be careful. These are hot, but you do
want to move pretty quickly while they're still warm.
Once you've cut a hole in all of your Eclair shells we can go ahead and take
this tray back to the oven. Now we are going to leave the oven door cracked and
we are going to turn off the oven. We're going to let these shells sit in the
oven for at least another 10 minutes. This is going to keep them from
collapsing in on themselves. Once 10 minutes has passed you'll want to pull
those shells out of the oven and let them cool completely before we go any
further. Now before we start assembling our eclairs I'm going to make our
chocolate topping. This is what really sets an eclair apart from a cream puff,
if you ask me. Cream puffs are usually topped with powdered sugar. The eclairs
always have that chocolate frosting on top. The first thing you need for the
chocolate topping is 1/3 cup of semi-sweet, or dark chocolate chips, or
you can use 2 ounces of a chocolate bar. We are going to place these chocolate
chips in a heatproof bowl. Add 1 tablespoon of butter, salted or unsalted is fine.
And we're going to melt these together in the microwave.
So once our chocolate is melted, we are going to add a cup and a half of powdered sugar and whisk that in.
Now this is going to get pretty stiff that's fine we're going to
add some water in just a bit to thin it out.
Now you're not really going to be able to work the powdered sugar in with the chocolate. It's not going to be
a nice smooth mixture at this point. So we're going to add some hot water. You're going
to need about one and a half to three tablespoons, maybe a little less, maybe a
little bit more, and you're going to stir that in until you have a nice smooth icing.
I like my icing to be a little bit thinner so I'm going to add just a bit more hot water.
Okay now our eclairs are ready to be assembled. Now one thing that I
like to do before assembling them is I like to take a long wooden skewer, you
could also use a knife, and I like to just pierce the Eclair all the way
through. So I'll just insert the skewer into the hole that I cut, and I will
insert this all the way through just to make sure that we have a clear pathway
for our pastry cream. Once you've done that you'll want to take your pastry bag
and you just insert that tip directly into that hole that you sliced in each Eclair.
I like to hold them upright so gravity helps keep that pastry, pull that
pastry through the Eclair, and just fill each shell.
I'll usually fill one side and then I'll turn the Eclair around and fill the other.
This is just more efficient at filling the Eclair all the way through than just trying to pipe it all through one side.
One thing to be mindful of is you don't want to overfill
your Eclair shells. You want to fill them just enough so they're not bursting.
You do have enough pastry cream to fill all of these shells.
After you've filled each Eclair you're going to want to dip it in chocolate. You can use a spatula to
spread the chocolate frosting over each Eclair. I like to dip mine directly in
the chocolate, and the easiest way I've found to do this is to pour the
chocolate into a pie plate. This is a nice shallow dish. It's a lot easier for
dipping your eclairs in here than it is for the bowl. If you try to dip your
Eclair in the bowl the shell just usually has trouble getting all the way
into that chocolate, and getting a nice coating. It's nice. It's much easier if you have a nice shallow dish.
And that is how you make eclairs at home. I hope you guys enjoyed today's recipe.
If you tried this one out I would love to hear how it turns out for you.
I always love hearing from you. Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you next time.