i'm sharing with you how to make incredibly delicious chocolate eclairs
filled with pastry cream and topped with chocolate ganache they're pretty easy to
make at home welcome to recipes by karina
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to start we want to make choux pastry which is really simple and easy
it's used to make eclipse cream puffs or profiteroles which you can turn into a
fancy crooked bush as well as savoury french appetizers
in a medium-sized saucepan measure out the water and butter
you'll need 1 cup or 250 ml of water in one stick half a cup or 113 grams of
butter you'll notice i give the recipe amounts
and cups and gram so no matter where you live in the world
you should find this recipe easy enough to follow if you'd like the
full recipe for these eclairs it'll be on my website as well as the
full measurements in the description box below
add a pinch of salt to the saucepan and place it over medium heat
until the butter is melted and it has come to the boil
it may seem a little odd to be melting these together
because usually with pastry you're kind of trying to keep it as cold as possible
but chew pastry is a little different
while the butter is melting measure out the flour we'll need 1 cup or 125 grams
of all-purpose standard white flour place it into a
separate bowl you'll notice the flour is the only dry
ingredient in this recipe there isn't any sugar it's not
traditional and you won't really need any
the filling and chocolate on top is what is going to give most of the flavor and
sweetness to the eclairs we also won't need any leave-in like
baking powder or soda as the egg and steam are what makes
these eclairs puff up over double their original size when
they're in the oven make sure the butter is melted and it's
come to the boil then we're ready to add in the flour
pour it into the saucepan and using a wooden spoon
combine the ingredients together keep the heat to medium low at this point
while continuously stirring making sure to incorporate
all of the flour it'll be pretty clumpy and stiff at this point once the flour
has been absorbed as you keep stirring over the heat the
mixture will start to come together in a ball
smooth out and stop sticking to the sides
this should take a few minutes so you'll get a bit of an arm workout
we're trying to cook out the flour here not to get rid of that floury taste as
that will happen in the oven later but to actually cook the starch so when
the eclairs are in the oven and puff up they hold their shape
so much better it's kind of like making a roux to thicken a sauce
the cooked starch stabilizes the other ingredients
when it's starting to stick together in one big bowl it's time to remove it from
the heat place the mixture into a mixing bowl
pushing it out flat and leave it to cool for about 10
minutes or so uncovered we're going to be adding eggs next so we
don't want them to cook as we mix them in
after 10 minutes check to feel the temperature of the flour mixture
and if it's warm but not hot we're ready to continue
we'll need between four and five medium room temperature eggs
start with the first and crack it into the mixing bowl
using the wooden spoon start to mix everything together
it'll be hard at first as the egg doesn't really want to incorporate
you can use a stain mixer for this or a hair mixer but i've always just done it
by hand
once it's combined add the next egg and continue
with each egg added you'll notice the batter significantly start to thin out
i find a wooden spoon is best here rather than a whisk as the batter will
just get completely stuck the first egg is the most challenging to
incorporate but the next three should be a lot easier
the reason i say between four and five eggs is they're not standard
in size the size of my eggs won't be exactly the same as your eggs so when
the consistency of our dough is really important we need to go by feel
to get it accurate we want to get it to the dropping
consistency which means when you lift a scoop out of the bowl with the wooden
spoon after a few seconds it falls down in one
clump kind of hard to explain but with the
video you should get what i mean here you can see it's still too thick
and isn't falling off the spoon i'm not certain if it'll need the whole
egg or just half so i'm going to whisk it up with a fork in a separate bowl and
add half at a time checking the consistency to get it right
it's still a little too thick so i ended up using the whole
egg this is basically the perfect consistency
it falls in one clump off the wooden spoon after a few seconds
it's really easy to just go ahead and add five eggs although you may find
it just pours off the wooden spoon and at that point it's kind of
too far to come back when the eclipse bake you'll find they won't hold their
shape and will kind of melt down instead of puffing up in a beautiful
shape fill a piping bag with the chew pastry
if you don't have a piping bag you can use a ziploc bag
or make one with baking paper pipe lines onto your lined baking tray
it's really optional what size and shape you want to go for mine are
about eight centimeters or three inches long i'm using a two
centimeter round tip here once you have your shapes you'll notice
they won't be pretty at the ends this isn't an issue as we can fix it
with water wet your finger and use it to shape the
ends of the eclair making sure there are no thin bits of choux pastry at the end
as these will burn in the oven
place your eclairs into a hot 220 degrees celsius
or 420 degree fahrenheit oven for around 30 minutes or until puffed up
and golden brown you don't want to take them out too
early as they may not have had long enough to dry out which will lead
to a soggy eclair rather than crispy there are many
options for fillings and toppings for your eclairs
i'm going traditional with chocolate ganache as a topping
and cream patisserie or pastry cream for a filling
i will leave the recipe for pastry cream in the description box below
as well as on my website if you haven't made it before i have a very informative
video which will help you get it absolutely perfect to make the chocolate
ganache pour hot cream over your dark chocolate and leave it for five minutes
before stirring you should end up with a thick glossy
chocolate mixture
when your eclairs have cooled to room temperature they're ready to be filled
use a piping bag knife or end of a spoon to create two holes at the end of the
eclair pipe your pastry cream into each end
until the eclair is full dip it into the chocolate ganache to get
a good coating on the top and leave it to set i would recommend
only doing this about 30 minutes before serving your eclairs as they will start
to soak up the moisture from the pastry cream and become soggy
these are incredibly delicious and something fun and not too difficult to
make at home let me know if you are going to try this
recipe and if you have any questions thank you so much for watching and i
will see you on my next video
you