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