Éclair mit Flair

I´ve got a whole lot of savoury things that I've made lately, sitting and waiting for me to type their recipes and put them up but the demand for desserts and cakes was so high that I had to request the prepared dishes to sacrifice their turn and let me please your sweet tooth first.

Yesterday I made pate a choux -  its the basic dough for eclairs, cream puffs etc. Idea was actually to make savoury cream cheese and chicken balls for appetizers but the moment I took out the baked puffs out of the oven, that tempting aroma of baked eggs and flour screamed to my ears that they wish to have a sweeeeettttt treatment instead. (And as my husband says, if theres anything in life that gets me convinced without much argument and hesitation, then thats a call for desserts.) I didnt even bother to resist the temptation for a second and easily gave up in favour of a Crème pâtissière (vanilla pastry cream) filling and chocolate topping :p

And as always, the more I indulged myself in the sweet world, the more I wanted to do new things. And once again, I started with a thing and then deviated to something else.

Here's my version of cream puffs with a vanilla pastry cream filling and chocolate glaze...

First, make the choux pastry!



Ingredients:

150 ml water
60 g butter
12 tbs flour
2 eggs
1/4 tsp salt

Boil water with butter and salt in a pan until it starts bubbling.

 Baby bottles are ideal for measuring liquids

Take off from heat and add flour. Mix well with a whisk until it leaves the sides of the pan.

Keep aside to cool a bit. And then start adding eggs one by one. You can now use the electric mixer with the dough hooks for kneading.

It will be a sticky dough

Take a baking tray, oil it and then sprinkle some water over it. You can either use a normal spoon to form the small balls or pipe out small swirls using a pastry bag.

Also pipe out some of the sticky dough in a hook-shape.

Bake in preheated oven (200 C) for about 30-35 minutes. Don't open before they turn golden brown on top.
Take out the tray and place aside to c


Crème pâtissière



Ingredients:
 2 eggs

4 tbs fine sugar
2 tbs cornflour
300 ml milk
2 drops vanilla essence

Beat sugar and eggs for 10 minutes. Bring the milk to boil and remove from heat. Add cornflour to the egg sugar mixture and mix. Start adding milk gradually while stirring continuously. Place on low heat again and keep on stirring until it forms like a thick sauce. Remove from heat and place aside to cool.



Chocolate Glaze


Ingredients:

25 g butter
1 tbs milk
1 tbs cocoa powder
100 g powder sugar


Melt butter with milk in a pan, remove from heat and add in cocoa powder and sugar. Mix well.


Ive tried to explain rest of the procedure through pictures.

Decorate the plate using a small fork and sieve some cocoa over it

Cut the puffs horizontally with a knife and then cut the tops vertically till the middle (for making wings) using scissors.


Spoon two tablespoons of vanilla cream onto the base and cover with the top wings (brushed with chocolate cream). Put the neck/head of the swan in place.

I forgot to dip the wings in chocolate, so I did that later with the help of a baking brush:)