Chocolate Eclairs - Scrumptious Bites - Chefling TalesChefling Tales

Chocolate Eclairs – Scrumptious Bites

February 16, 2013

So I have been asked by many of my friends for this recipe of Chocolate Eclairs. I myself tried it only very recently when me and my best friend had my place all to ourselves and decided to do some baking to satisfy our sweet cravings. It was something we had been planning to make together for years but never got around to it. This recipe turned out to be just simply amazing and mouth watering and scrumptious but yet SIMPLE … or so i think!! I find it to be one of those desserts that, at first sight look difficult to pull off but trust me this ain’t as difficult as it looks … making these chocolate eclairs is SIMPLE!

Chocolate Eclairs

Before I give you this recipe, I would like to add a disclaimer here. Now when making desserts I work on them by the look of the mixture and don’t necessarily stick with the EXACT measurements but for the sake of all those who will be trying this, I am going to try to be as accurate with them as I can. Enjoy

Recipe: Chocolate Eclairs

Ingredients

Ingredients for Pâte à Choux (Puff Pastry)

80 g butter
(Slice it into smaller pieces so it melts easily)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup milk
1cup All-purpose flour
1 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
4 eggs

Ingredients for the cream filling

Cream (2 small packs)
Sugar to taste
1 tsp vanilla essence

Topping of Chocolate Ganache

2/3rd cup of Milk chocolate chips
1/3rd cup of Dark chocolate chips (If you can’t find chocolate chips, normal chocolate bars would do just fine)
2/3rd cup cream
1 tbsp butter

Now lets begin …

Instructions

Before we do anything else we need to prepare our filling for chocolate eclairs and pop it into the fridge so it doesn’t melt by the time our puff pastry gets ready.

Whip up the cream with sugar and vanilla essence (I prefer putting around 2-3 tbsp sugar into the cream but if you want it sweeter you can take the liberty of putting in some more).
Be careful not to whip it too much so that it turns into butter. Just whip it till it forms soft peaks.
Now throw it into the fridge till your puff pastry is ready and all cooled down
Preheat your over to 450 F
Pour water and milk into a saucepan along with the butter and bring it to a boil on medium heat so as to make sure that the butter melts completely and you don’t burn the milk.
In a bowl mix the flour with the salt and sugar.
Once the milk mixture comes to a boil, throw all of the flour into it in one go and turn off the stove.
And now … MIX MIX N MIX!! (Don’t worry about getting any lumps) You will see the whole thing will turn into a ball of dough.
When that happens, you are ready to proceed to the next step, which let me warn you beforehand, will require a lot of arm power.
Put one egg at a time into this dough mixture and again MIX MIX N MIX! Now I know the moment you will beat in the first egg you will feel like something has gone wrong because the dough will start break apart.
Not to worry AT ALL! This is inevitable. You just have to be patient and not give up on mixing with all your strength.
The dough will start to come together as it absorbs the egg.
Once it has done that, you can add your next egg and start again with the torture of nearly breaking your arm with all that mixing (but it will all be worth it, trust me).
Now that you have all your eggs incorporated, you should have a thick paste that isn’t all that sticky if you rub it between your fingers.
This mixture is going to need 2 baking trays. Line the trays with a baking sheet. If you do this my way, I take a piping bag and pipe it out onto the trays. You can replace the piping bag with a zip lock bag and cut off one of its corner AFTER you have filled it with the puff pastry mixture.
OR you can spoon it out but that can be tedious. And make sure to leave sufficient spacing between each puff mixture because they will rise and expand.
With a wet finger flatten any sharp peaks or corners once you have laid the mixture on the tray since they can burn quiet easily. Pop them into the oven for 15 minutes then reduce the oven temperature to 375 F and bake them for another 10 minutes.
Baking the puff pastry for Chocolate Eclairs

Pop them out and let them cool for a while. Till then we need to prepare out chocolate ganache.
Now I know my chocolate eclairs recipe calls for some dark chocolate chips. Its completely optional but it DOES add a kick to that ganache. So you can either use 1 cup milk chocolate chips OR mix of both milk and dark chocolate chips just like my recipe states.
Pour the cream into a saucepan and bring it to a simmer (not a boil). Once it’s there, pour it onto the chocolate and leave it aside for a minute or so. This will give the chocolate enough time to melt.
Then whisk it together and if you feel the chocolate hasn’t melted enough, you can pop it into the microwave for 10 seconds.
Add the butter for that shiny touch to the ganache and we are done!
Its time to put our heavenly Chocolate eclairs together. Make a tiny slit in your puff pastry using a knife and pipe in the cream.
Then holding the pastry in your hands, dip the top side into the ganache. Now THIS is the best part … put the chocolate eclairs in your mouth and take a bite!! Voila!! =)

Hope you guys enjoy making these Chocolate Eclairs as much as I did and enjoy it even more eating them =) Although I have tried my best to go into details of every process, if you have any queries leave a comment below and I will get back to you. Cheers!!

Preparation time: 45 minute(s)

Cooking time: 30 minute(s)

Recipe Serves: 35 eclairs