Eclairs

This was not an easy lesson! It was our first attempt at pâte à choux. For me at least, the choux wasn't too terrible to make, mine took the right amount of eggs at least, so that was a good start to the day. Unfortunately after that the wheels came off the wagon. It not easy to pipe one even eclair shape, let alone a whole half sheet pan of consistently sized and shaped eclairs.  It could have been worse though. Then we made the three flavors of pastry cream (vanilla, coffee, and chocolate). That was fine, a different recipe, but still the same principle as the pastry cream I've already gotten used to making. The problems came when we piped the cream into the eclairs. It was messy and sticky and I ran out of time and cream. Then we had to dip them in pate à glacé (chocolate glaze) and vanilla or coffee fondant. They were hard to melt without over heating them and then they were messy and we were running out of time. I didn't end up doing the vanilla fondant, instead I did chocolate on the vanilla cream filled ones (and obviously on the chocolate) and coffee fondant on the coffee). I actually like the chocolate glaze more than the fondant, but I know that wasn't quite right. Ah well, it saved time so I was actually able to finish glazing them.

I have to say for all the effort, they were really good. I'm not sure they were worth all those hours (yes, they took hours) of work. Ah well, I did really enjoy eating them, so that's something!

Coffee eclair