Eclairs

Eclairs are a very famous French pastry common everywhere. They are made with homemade choux dough and they are filled with also homemade custard and glazed with dark chocolate. You could filled them in many other ways but this is the original one. They are very soft and delicate and their appereance is very elegant too. Their flavor it’s amazing and I relly recommend you to try them! 🙂

Degree of difficulty: hard

Preparation time:

For the dough: 1 hour + 15 minutes in the oven

For the custard: 40 minutes + 10 minutes to cool

Ingredients: (for 30 Eclairs)

For the choux dough:

1 mug water
1 1/4 mug white flour
1/2 mug butter
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
salt

For the custard:

4 egg yolks
4 teaspoons white sugar
4 teaspoons white flour
1/2 liter milk
hall zest of a yellow lemon/orange
a stick of cinnamon

For the glaze:

200g dark chocolate

Instructions:

First of all we will start with the choux dough: place the water in a pin and let it boil with the cutted butter and salt.
When it’s boiling add the flour and mix with a wooden spoon. Meanwhile mix in a bowl the eggs and the vanilla extract very well.
When the dough in the pan it’s smooth and compact add it in the eggs bowl and mix with an electric mixer.
When it’s very creamy heat the oven at 210C and then you can start doing your Eclairs by placing the dough in a pastry bag with big hole (like 2-3 mm). Make small lines in a tin covered with parchment paper (I used buttered silver paper) and place it in the oven for 15-17 minutes. They must be golden but not soo much.
Meanwhile you can start doing your cream by mixing very well the yolks with the sugar.
Then you can heat in a pin the milk with the hall zest of the orange and the cinnamon at medium fire and after that you can add the eggs mixure and mix always with a wooden spoon until it gets creamy.
Place it in a pastry bag and you can start filling yur Eclair just making a large cut in the edge.
Finally melt the dark chocolate with a double boiler or in the microwawe and glaze the Eclairs on top and they are ready! You can place them in the fridge and I suggest you to try them with coffee or chocolate at breakfast or just alone 😉