Yes, we are making eclairs on my channel for the 3rd time. I know, I swore off the eclairs
a couple of months ago in my cream puff video. They have driven me crazy for years. But never
say never. I finally mastered eclairs and it’s one of my viewers that I have to thank
for this. I am so sorry I don’t know how to pronounce your name, but if you are watching
this, thank you. You are probably thinking, wait a second, we never even discussed eclairs.
True, but you mentioned a YouTube channel on my croissant video that led me down a rabbit
hole that solved all of my eclair problems. That channel is La Pâte de Dom and it is
fabulous. When I watched Dom’s eclair video, I noticed a few things he was doing differently
than I was. He was using a perforated silicone mat and no convection fan and no steam in
the oven. Actually, he was doing a whole bunch of other things differently, but that’s
the two big ideas that I wanted to test out.
I started with the silicone mat. Everyone on youtube who was producing perfect eclairs
seemed to have one, Dom, Bruno Albouze, Alex & Milana. I bought the mat. I baked my eclairs
on it. And … they were just as inconsistent as always. About half of my eclairs had cracks
and didn’t rise evenly.
For my second try, I decided to use the silicone mat and also to skip the convection fan. And
what do you know -- perfect eclairs. Every single one of them. I was so excited, I decided
to film the eclair video for you. I whipped up a batch of pate a choux, piped, baked,
and… Oh yikes, the sides came out nice and even, but look at those awful bursts in the
tops. I mean they are usable, but not great. Well, that’s eclairs for you, I thought.
Just when you think you got them, they stop behaving. Oh well, I piped and baked the second
half of the batter. I used parchment this time since I only have 1 silicon mat. I didn’t
expect much, but to my surprise the second sheet came out very nicely. And then it hit
me. The difference was that the batter sat for an hour after making. My first success
was with a leftover batch of dough after a pate a choux class. I didn’t give it much
thought, but that batter wasn’t just made. It sat for at least an hour after I made it.
I checked Dom’s video again and sure enough, he lets his batter rest before piping.
Ok, we were finally getting somewhere. I made another batch of dough. Let it sit for an
hour, then piped and baked the first half on a silicone mat, then piped and baked the
second half on parchment paper. They were all good. The tops and bottoms came out equally
well on a perforated mat and on parchment. The ones on a perforated mat had slightly
less bursting on the sides. See this one has no bursting at all, and this one has just
a little. On parchment, several of them had things like this happen to one side.
Is the silicon mat worth it? If you are a perfectionist, yes. Just look at this -- doesn’t
that look like a seriously bad ass eclair? But all the ones that were baked on parchment
were still the best eclairs that I’ve ever made.
You might be wondering why didn’t I just follow Dom’s recipe to the letter. There
are a couple of reasons. The first is that he lives in France and thus we’d be using
slightly different butter and flour, which is always asking for trouble. The second reason
is that I wanted to understand the variables and the only way to do that is to test each
variable. If I simply switched to his procedure, I’d be changing more than a dozen variables
and then I wouldn’t learn which one does what. And the third reason is that I suck
at following directions. I know that I always tell you to follow directions, but unless
I understand why I am doing something there is some stubborn part of me that refuses to
do it. If you want to try Dom’s recipe, I’ll link to it in the description below.
Since I just made a very thorough video on cream puffs (linked below) I am not going
to remake the pate a choux and pastry cream, and diplomat cream, and the chocolate glaze
in this video. But I will show you everything you need to know to turn that recipe or any
recipe that you might be using into eclairs.
Fit your pastry bag with Ateco 867 tip. It is slightly bigger than the one I use for
cream puffs.
Don’t pipe pate a choux right after making. Put it into a pastry bag, wrap the tip in
plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for at least 1 hour and up to 3. Longer is
not better. After the first hour, it will bake great.
Preheat the oven to 350F with the rack in the bottom third.
Pipe on an inverted baking sheet. If using parchment paper, secure it to the baking sheet
with a little bit of dough in the corners. For a perforated mat, that’s not necessary
since it doesn’t slide.
Use a ruler or some sort of guide to make your eclairs straight and uniform. I pipe
mine to be 5 inches long. I want my eclair to start here, so I position the tip half
an inch away from that point to account for my dough expanding away from me.
Keep the piping bag almost parallel to the baking sheet. It’s ok to pipe very slowly.
Just make sure you don’t allow the dough to bunch up or to stretch.
In the end, I like to cut off the dough with a knife, but I always forget that on my first
eclair. Here we go, I’ve got the knife.
Make your two rows staggered to help with the heat distribution.
Spray the eclairs evenly with water. I use a hairdressers bottle that produces a very
even fine mist. It’s in the description below. I spray from both sides of my baking
sheet to make sure the mist falls evenly. Touch up the ends of your eclairs with a wet
finger.
Then sprinkle them with powdered sugar through a fine mesh sieve. By the time I go through
all the eclairs, the powdered sugar completely dissolves and then I go through them with
the sugar the second time.
By the way, there seems to be no agreement on what to put on top of eclairs. Some people
spray them with water, some sprinkle them with powdered sugar, some brush them with
butter, Dom sprays them with unflavored coconut oil and then he sprinkles them with sugar.
Since washing coconut oil out of a spray bottle seems almost impossible, I decided to use
water instead. I tested using only water. And water plus powdered sugar. Both worked
fine, but the powdered sugar ones had slightly fewer bursts on the sides and they were a
tad more crispy on top.
What we are trying to do here with all that water and sugar is to keep the eclairs soft
on top as long as possible. This will give them a chance to expand fully before they
start to crisp up. That’s also the reason that we are not using convection. I used to
use it in the hopes that it would promote even baking. But all it was doing was crisping
up the top prematurely making the built up steam burst out of whichever place is softest
and weakest, which is usually the sides.
Ok, time to bake.
Place your eclairs into the bottom third of 350F oven for 45 minutes or until they are
completely firm to the touch. Don’t open the oven door during the baking process so
that they don’t collapse.
Then pipe and bake the second half of the dough.
Cool eclairs completely and then fill.
Since all the pros seem to be using the bismarck tip for filling their eclairs, I bought one
and decided to give it a shot. It didn’t work all that well for me. I am guessing that’s
because I am not using straight pastry cream. I fill my eclairs with diplomat cream which
is pastry cream lightened with whipped cream. This stuff is just too fluffy to go through
a tiny hole, so I went back to the same technique I showed you in my cream puff video.
Wiggle in the Ateco 864 tip to make 2 holes in the bottom of your eclair. If you see any
dough webs blocking you, poke through them with a skewer or a thermometer. Then use Ateco
804 tip to fill the eclairs. Pipe the cream into the first hole until you see it through
the second hole. Then pipe into the second hole until the cream in the first hole starts
to rise. Clean up your eclairs
and dunk into the glaze. You’ll probably make the glaze in a bowl, but it helps to
move it into some container that’s long enough to comfortably hold the eclairs. Chill
for at least 30 minutes and up to 24 hours. They are at their best after 1 to 3 hours
in the fridge.
Until this version, I did what most YouTubers do with eclairs -- fill the few perfect ones
for the camera and hide the duds, but this time, there are no duds. Here they are. Every
single one of them.
Again I want to thank my wonderful mystery viewer and the incomparable Dom for helping
me solve my eclair woes.
Here are more culinary tutorials for you to check out and a link to my online classes
is in the description below.