[TCF AUGUST] Chocolate Eclairs

Hello there ! I'm relatively new and it's my first time entering the food contest but chocolate seems like a good jumping point ! I actually made these about a week ago, but I've been swamped since so you'll have to forgive my very very belated entry. But I did take lots of pictures because, well, food porn.

I decided on eclairs because I wanted something fit for a contest hosted on Fakku. They're a couple inches long, filled with thick milky cream, and girls everywhere love em ;) ! Anyway - here you go ! ( caution: this is a long process, so get ready to put aside some time for whoever is brave enough )

Two preparations here, one for the pastry cream filling and one for the actual pastry :
Pastry Cream

Boil your milk on the stove. Once it's reaches a rolling boil, turn it off, and whisk together the eggs and sugar/cornstarch mixture. Pour your hot milk in one thirds into your eggs/sugar mix. Pour this back into the pot and turn on medium low heat. Whisk this until you've noticed it's thickened and slow bubbles pop to the surface. Take this off heat IMMEDIATELY. A couple seconds too slow and your cream will turn into voila ! scrambled eggs. Pour this thick cream through a strainer, and stir in your butter and vanilla extract. Keep cool for a couple hours until its firms up.

Pastry Dough

You'll also want a piping bag, and a large/small tips.

Bring your butter/water/milk mix up to a boil. Pour in all your flour at once. Stir vigorously with a spoon. When you start seeing this:

then keep beating it for about 2-3 minutes and take it off heat. Stir in, again beating it vigorously, the three eggs and two egg whites. Put this all in a piping bag with a big tip and pipe it into long fingers on a cookie tray ( or whatever the hell shape you want, really ) ~ Bake this off at 425 for 10 minutes, then turn your oven down to 325 for 10 more minutes.

Take these guys out and let them cool ! They'll puff up and look like this:



Fill up your pastry bag again, this time with the DE-licious cream ! :D Poke holes in your little pastry, hollow em out with a chopstick or whatever long skinny object you have on hand, and squeeze the dairy goodness into 'em !

And then dip/cover those suckers in the ingredient of the month ! Sweet sweet chocolate. and LOTS of it.


I drizzled mine with white chocolate too. Then bring them over to your girlfriend and bask in the glory as she bows at your feet run up into your room and eat all of them in a dark corner.

You just can't go wrong, either way. ^ ~

Eclairs are wonderful. I do love the cream... *_*

Don't forget to link this thread to the contest thread!

holy shit - this looks quite delicious

and the pics look all professional and stuff O.o

Congrats on your first entry - it looks great and I look forward to seeing more entries from you.

food porn...yum!

Ahh, I'll get right on that ! Knew I was forgetting something

WOooow that looks soooo yummy!!! *drools and melts* I looove eclairs and I was always told they are hard to make! >n< and you mentioned it's a long process to make... err..well, I think I'll just stick to supermarket ones then...T__T

Well - you could always replace the cream with some vanilla pudding ! It's the substitute that most home bakers tend to replace the pastry cream with, but I do guarantee that the extra step making the custard yourself is very worth it :P (but pudding is still delicious)

Thank you, mouse ! ^^ I used my cellphone to take them all but my kitchen is very very bright, which might contribute to that !

I just had a chance to check that website out, too. Favved ~ Must...resist...licking..the screen..

awsome! I love eclairs!