- Hey guys, today I'm gonna show you how to make
one of my favorite French pastries, the eclair.
This is a recipe that you guys have been requesting
ever since this channel launched,
so I thought it was time to get to this one.
I will be honest, eclairs do take a little bit of time
to put together, but the results are well worth the effort.
So settle in, grab yourself a cup of tea
and let me show you how to tackle
one of the world's most delectable treats.
The first thing we're going to do is create the pastry cream
that is going to fill our eclairs.
In a large saucepan, you're going to add
two cups of whole milk
and then you're also gonna add a vanilla bean.
Just take a vanilla bean, slice it down the center,
scrape out the seeds and pop the paste in with the milk.
The other thing I like to do is also
throw in the bean pod, as well.
There's a ton of flavor in that pod so why put it to waste,
you can add that, too.
You're just gonna simmer your milk
for about three to four minutes,
just until all of that vanilla bean paste
starts to come to the surface.
At that point, you can fish out the vanilla pod
and set your milk aside to cool.
Then, in a large heat-safe bowl,
you're going to add four egg yolks,
a third of a cup of sugar
and a third of a cup of corn starch.
You can go ahead and whisk that up
until you get a nice pale yellow color
and then we're gonna go back to our milk mixture
and we're gonna slowly pour it into the eggs,
whisking all the while, just to temper those eggs
so that we don't scramble them
and then you'll see you'll have a nice,
liquidy custard on your hands.
At that point, you want to wash out your sauce pan,
take out a large fine mesh sieve
and then we're gonna pour this egg mixture through the sieve
and this will just catch any of the pieces
that didn't incorporate
and will also create a really nice smooth custard.
Okay, so now this is the part
where you really have to be careful.
There are a couple of things throughout this process
where it can all go wrong (chuckles)
and this is one of them,
so pay attention, this is what you want to do.
You're gonna set your mixture on high
just until it starts to boil,
whisking all the while.
You do want to kind of keep this mixture moving
so that it doesn't burn on the bottom.
Once it starts to boil, that is going
to activate that corn starch,
so then you want to turn down your flame
to like a medium-low
and then you'll start to see your mixture
will begin to thicken,
so go ahead and continue to whisk just until you get a nice,
creamy, smooth mixture on your hands.
At this point, we are going to add a tablespoon of butter.
Just whisk it in and this will create
a really nice, smooth texture.
Then we're gonna transfer our pastry cream
to a shallow bowl.
I like to use a shallow bowl because
it will just cool quicker that way.
And then place the plastic wrap on top,
making sure that you're actually placing it down
with your hand so that your pastry cream
does not form a skin.
Go ahead and pop it in the fridge until you're ready to use.
Before we get started on the shells,
one thing I do like to have prepared in advance
is my cookie sheet.
You're gonna line your cookie sheet
with some parchment paper.
And then, if you are a perfectionist and sometimes,
when you set out on these projects, I know,
I can be the same way, I do like to have them look pretty
and part of that is making sure they're all uniform in size.
That will also help them cook the same way, as well.
You can take a pencil and, with a ruler,
just draw out four-inch lines,
you're gonna do five on the top
and then stagger the next row below
and do five on the bottom.
What we're gonna do is then flip our paper
and see you can see it showing through
and that will just serve as a guideline
as we go to pipe out our eclairs,
assuring that they're all the same size.
You're not gonna have any fights if someone starts to say
they're getting the bigger one.
That's what my children would do.
At this point, it's time to make our pastry shells
or the Pate a Choux, as it's called.
Take out a large saucepan,
you're going to add nine tablespoons of butter
and one cup of water.
Basically, what you want to do is melt that butter
and heat the water until everything is liquefied.
While the butter and water is heating,
you can mix together your dry ingredients.
In a small bowl, we're gonna add a cup of flour,
two teaspoons of sugar, a half a teaspoon of salt.
You can go ahead and just whisk that up
until it's combined.
Once your water mixture is bubbling,
then we're going to add this dry mixture
and then, with a wooden spoon, start to mix it up.
What will happen is it will begin to pull away
from the sides, and you'll see you'll get a nice
little dough ball on your hands.
At that stage, this is the other part
where it can all go wrong,
you want to make sure that you cook that dough ball mixture
on a medium-low flame for about a minute.
What that is going to do is really combine
that flour and the butter well.
If you don't do this stage,
what will happen is when you go to pipe out your pastry
and it hits the hot oven, the butter and flour
will start to separate,
and that's when you'll begin to get cracks
and the butter will ooze out and it'll be a whole big mess.
So, take a minute now to avoid a disaster later
and go ahead and just cook that up.
At this point, I do like to make a little indentation
in the dough ball because this is where
we are going to place our lightly beaten eggs.
The reason you want to do that is so that the heat
from the pot doesn't start to scramble the eggs.
I find that if it hits the dough ball,
it will prevent that from happening.
We're gonna slowly pour four lightly beaten eggs
onto our dough ball and start to mix with that wooden spoon.
At first, it's gonna look like a big slimy mess
and it's not gonna look like anything
is gonna come out of this but I'm telling you,
if you just keep mixing,
you will start to get a beautiful dough on your hands.
Now it's time to transfer our Pate a Choux
to our pastry bag fitted with a round tip
that's about half inch in size
and then you can twist your bag
and then we're basically just going to trace our lines.
As you're piping your lines, you'll notice the end,
you'll get like a little peak at the end, not to worry,
there's a way that we're gonna fix that in a minute
so go ahead and just get all your piping done.
At this stage, we're gonna take a spoon
that has been dipped in some cold water
and we're just gonna go over and just touch it
with any of the peaks and you'll see
that will get them to settle down.
You can just go in there and make any adjustments
that you need to,
to make sure all of your eclairs are looking good
because if they don't look good now,
they're gonna bake that way
and then you're not gonna be happy later
so go ahead and just take a little time to pretty them up.
Now it's time to bake our eclairs and this is the other
critical part when it comes to making a great eclair,
the way that you bake your shells.
What you're gonna do is place them in the oven
at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 15 minutes
and during this stage of baking, this is when your eclairs
are going turn golden brown
and they're going to rise up.
After the 15 minutes is up,
you want to reduce your oven to 350
and bake for another 20 to 25 minutes.
What this is going to do is allow those eclairs to bake
in the inside and really start to dry out,
because if the shells are not dried out in the interior,
what's going to happen is they're going to collapse
when they hit the cold air
after you take them out of the oven.
After the second stage of baking is up,
here's the other critical part.
You want to turn off your oven and open your door
and let your shells rest in the oven for 10 minutes.
The reason you want to do that is you want them
to cool down at a very gradual rate.
If you take them out now and you actually put them
on the counter, they're also going to deflate
so leaving them in the oven to actually cool themselves
is really going to prevent that.
So that's step number one.
Number two is you want to go in with a small knife
and just cut an incision about a half an inch
on the side of the shell.
What that's gonna do is release the steam.
Again, if you don't release the steam,
they also could collapse, so that's another critical part
to the process which will dry out those interiors
and allow them to keep their structure.
Once your shells are cool,
then we're going to prepare them for filling.
All you're gonna do is flip them over
to reveal their bottoms,
then what I like to do is take a little pastry tip,
about a quarter of an inch in size,
that has a little jagged edge, you know,
something that looks like a little star tip
and then pierce the bottom of them
and make two to three holes on the bottom,
depending on how much pastry cream you like.
If you like a lot of cream, go for three holes,
equally distant.
If you're halfway, go for two.
Then we are going to transfer our pastry cream
into a pastry bag fitted with the same size tip,
if you wanted to use the same tip, you could.
Then we are just going to fill our eclairs.
You gotta be careful, you don't want to overdo it
because these things are fragile,
so just go ahead and give it a little squirt in each hole
and you'll feel the weight of it
that they're actually being filled with the pastry cream.
Then it's time to prepare our chocolate glaze.
To prepare our glaze in a large, heat-safe bowl,
you're gonna add a cup and a half
of semi-sweet chocolate chips, and then you are going to
pour over a cup of hot, heavy cream.
Let it stand for just a few minutes
and then you can go in with a whisk and whisk it up.
You'll see, it won't look like much at first
but as you continue to stir, you're gonna get
a very smooth, chocolaty velvet ganache.
Then, to keep our chocolate nice and liquefied,
you can take your heat-safe bowl,
put it on top of a saucepan
that has about an inch of simmering water.
That will keep that chocolate nice and pliable.
We going to take our eclair,
we're going to lift it upside down
and just give it a nice little dunk in the chocolate bath.
When you release it, you can transfer it to a cooling rack.
We're gonna do that with all of our eclairs,
just making sure they're all getting
a nice amount of chocolate.
Once all your eclairs are done, you can transfer them
to your favorite serving piece,
and at this point, I do recommend keeping them in the fridge
until you're ready to serve.
When you bring these to the table,
you will get wows all around.
It is so impressive to see a home made chocolate eclair
that you have made from scratch.
I tell ya, all of the hard work that went in to making them
is well worth the effort.
I hope you guys give this one a try
and let me know what you think
and for more delicious recipes, be sure to subscribe.
It always makes me happy when you guys subscribe
and I will see you back here next week for another one.
Until then, bye.
(jazzy music)