August Daring Bakers: Mocha Éclairs
It’s the last day of August, which means you-know-what…Daring Bakers all over the blogosphere will be posting sweet creations. This month’s challenge: éclairs! Great choice, Tony and Meeta.
I was looking forward to working with choux again. I took a one-day class on pâte à choux when I lived in Boston at the Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, and it was loads of fun. We churned out cream puffs, éclairs, cream puff swans, and savory gougerès. During the class we were all divided up and assigned to make different recipes (tasting them all together at the end); I was assigned cheese puffs with blue cheese, so I was looking forward to trying my hand at the éclairs for this challenge.
The recipe is from Pierre Hermé (everyone’s favorite French pastry god!) The guidelines for the challenge were to use his cream puff recipe, and keep at least one element of chocolate — using either his recipe for chocolate pastry cream and/or chocolate glaze. I used his recipe for chocolate pastry cream, adding some instant espresso powder to the milk when I heated it, so the result was mocha pastry cream. Mmmm. I made a simple dark chocolate ganache for the tops.
The verdict? Awesome! So tasty, and each of the elements was pretty easy to make.
Piped choux, ready to head into the oven
Puffed and golden
Split, ganache spread on the tops, bottoms ready to fill
Delectable delights.
Check out Tony and Meeta’s blogs for the recipe — thanks to both of them for a great challenge pick! And as always, check out the Daring Bakers Blogroll to see everyone else’s éclairs!
Previous Daring Bakers Challenges:
Perfect Party Cake
Cheesecake Pops
Danish Braid
Filbert Gateau with Praline Buttercream
Great job!!
hi amy- i love seeing the shot of the raw pate a choux piped into the eclair before going in the oven. looks so smooth and silky…
that is awesome you got to go to a class to learn all about the dough. yours eclairs looks wonderful looks like the class really paid off.
Your eclairs look great, the mocha pastry cream sounds awesome and your eclairs puffed up beautifully!
great job.
You did fantastic with the challenge! I love ho plump and shiny they turned out!!
Nice job – beautiful results 🙂
Amy, your eclairs look so good! I agree with you – this month’s challenge was awesome! Loved it!
This is definitely making me hungry! I love the addition of mocha. Yum!
Perfect work, your class at the Culinary Institute was worthwhile. Excellent.
What a delicious take on an eclairs recipe :). Great job on this month’s challenge :D.
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