Chocolate Eclairs

Looks pretty good, huh?!

I love love love chocolate eclairs. They're one of my favorite desserts.
They turned out alright, but definitely presented some challenges through the process.

I followed this recipe. I've been wanting to tackle these little suckers for quite some time. Pate a choux is a fascinating dough.  It's the above ingredients. Simple. But you basically boil the water butter sugar salt together,  then whisk the flour into it over the heat. cooking it. Yes, cooking the dough! then you mix the eggs in after. You're left with a super sticky dough.

Somehow, through the science of baking ...when cooked again in the oven, the dough puffs up into hollow forms of whatever you piped. (in this case empty tubes to hold custard!) voila!

It's like magic.

The pastry cream was simple enough...if I had known what I was doing. [Challenge 1] the first batch, I let over-mix in the kitchen aid and was left with a strange bubbly custard when I tried to thicken it. So I trashed it and started over.  Batch 2 seemed to be going well, but while whisking it over the heat to thicken, it looked as if it was starting to curdle. At this point I began cussing while whisking my heart out and saying crazy things like, "you're not a f*@^&#g pastry chef! why, WHY did you decide to do this?! You could've made ice cream with all those egg yolks! At least you know what you're doing with that!" 

I don't know if was an act of the big man upstairs or what, but somehow...some way... that custard instantly thickened and came together. It happened so suddenly, literally within 5 seconds. weird runny curdling thing one second- BAM- thick pastry cream laced with lovely specks of real vanilla bean the next. I am left assuming that this is just how it works... that whole science of baking thing again. 

mind.blown.

[Challenge 2] I thinned the chocolate glaze too much. But, it's nothing a double dip in appropriate-thickness chocolate glaze didn't fix!

Now that I've done it once, I think a second go around is required- and will go much more smoothly. Getting the pacing of this down will surely yield greater success in the future. 

My takeaways from this: 

always read the recipe completely first

baking is a delicate process.

even if they don't look great, they taste pretty darn good-

and that's what maters