What are éclairs?

Éclairs is a typical french dessert which usually consist of choux pastry and are filled with pastry cream. Country by country, the filling differs. While in France, the chocolate éclairs will always have chocolate filling, in Spain, for example, the chocolate éclairs have vanilla filling. In Latvia, on the other hand, the filling is “more heavy” as we usually add more butter and cream. Chocolate ganache éclairs with vanilla pastry cream filling are my favorite ones – so, enjoy my French-Spanish recipe!

Yield: 25 medium size éclaires, 10-12cm long

Ingredients

• 300g choux pastry
• 250-300g pastry cream

150g glaze

• 50g black chocolate
• 40g ice sugar
• 20g butter
• 1 table spoon of water

or

• 100g white fondant (fondant blanc)
• 20g cacao powder

Step by step

• First, prepare pastry cream as per recipe in my blog. If you want to add chocolate flavor, add 20-50g dark chocolate, depending on the taste you want to have. I usually prefer vanilla flavor and I add as well one tea spoon of rum. To have more consistency, you´ll need to add butter – as indicated in the recipe around 20-30g.
• Second, prepare choux pastry. While preparing it, pre-heat oven up to 200C.
• As soon as the choux pastry is ready, take your pipping bag with the fluted nozzle and fill it with the choux pastry.
• Line a large baking tray with greaseproof paper and pipe on éclairs, each about 10-12cm long.  I prefer this size of éclairs as they seem to be easy to hold in hands and is a nice portion – not too big, not too small. You might need 2-3 baking trays to fit 25 éclairs.

• Bake the éclairs in the preheated oven for 20-30 minutes or until they are golden-brown, then transfer to a rack and leave to cool down.

• When the éclairs and the pastry cream have cooled down, take a small spoon and open a small hole on the each extreme of an éclair.
• Fill in the pipping bag with the pastry cream and using small size nozzle, fill in an éclair carefully from both sides. Do not overfill it, otherwise the cream will come out!

• When the éclairs are filled, start preparing the glaze. Melt the chocolate over bain-marie (water bath), add icing sugar, butter and water. Heat the glaze until you get smooth consistence.
• Hold an éclair carefully with your hands and pull the top side into the warm glaze. Adjust the amount of glaze with your fingers. Make sure that the glaze is not too hot.
• Leave the éclairs to cool down a bit and now they are ready to eat! Enjoy!