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chocolate eclairs

Source of Recipe

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Recipe Introduction

Eclairs have many variations, but 3 basic components: Pate a choux, filling and icing. This recipe is filled with vanilla pastry cream and iced with melted chocolate. The amount of everything that you make will depend on how many and how big the eclairs will be. The prep and cook times are misleading because you can do most of it simultaneously. This recipe makes about 7-8 eclairs.

List of Ingredients

Vanilla Pastry Cream:
2 cups whole milk
1 vanilla bean
2/3 cup sugar
2 tablespoons cornstarch
2 tablespoons flour
6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons unsalted butter

Pate a Choux:
3/4 cup water
1/2 Tsp salt
1/4 LB unsalted Butter
1 cup Bread flour
1 large whole egg
3 large egg whites
1 large whole egg, stirred

Dark Chocolate:
8 ounces chopped semisweet chocolate or bittersweet chocolate




Recipe

Pastry cream (Make a day ahead and up to a week ahead): Pour milk into saucepan, add scraped vanilla bean including pod.
Sift cornstarch, flour and sugar into a bowl.
Whisk egg yolks in another bowl.
Add dry ingredients to egg yolk and whisk until smooth.
Take yolk mixture, milk and butter to stove.
Heat milk until just simmering, stir about 1/2 cup of milk into yolk mixture, pour yolk mixture into pan with milk and heat on med low until it comes to a boil.
Stir constantly with wooden spoon.
Let boil, stirring, for 1 minute.
Turn off heat and stir in butter until completely melted and incorporated.
Pour entire contents of pan thru a strainer into a shallow stainless bowl.
Cover with plastic wrap, pressing directly on to cream.
chill until cold and firm.

Pate a Choux: Preheat oven to 300 degrees.
Bring water, salt and butter to a boil. Add flour all at once and stir until it makes a dough ball that pulls away from the pan. Put in mixer with paddle and mix at low speed until barely warm.
Beat in whole egg, add egg whites and beat in, then add about half of stirred egg and beat well. If dough is too stiff add remaining stirred egg.
Pipe onto baking sheet lined with parchment or silpat. Make whatever shapes are desired.
Place baking sheet into lower half of oven and turn heat up to 450. Bake for 10 - 15 minutes until puffed and browned. Turn oven down to 300 and continue to bake for 15 - 20 minutes until well dried out and light.
cool on rack.
Puffs can be used right away or frozen.

Dark Chocolate: Melt chopped chocolate over simmering water until melted.

Assembly: Take finished pate a choux and punch a hole in one end with something like a chop stick.
Put pastry cream into a piping bag with a narrow round tip and squeeze cream into hole to fill up pate a choux.

Dip filled pate a choux into melted chocolate to coat.