Vanilla (Chocolate & Matcha) Éclairs - French Fridays with Dorie

Its only my second week of French Fridays with Dorie, and the complexity of the recipes has already risen up a notch. From leisurely steaming broccoli last week to this, making éclairs. I was slightly intimidated to start off with but then realized that I had no real reason to be. Despite common perception, éclairs are actually not that complicated to make especially when you've got Dorie's soothing words guiding you.

My arsenal of choice for this challenge consisted of a wooden spoon, different-sized ziplock bags, gigantic piping tips, an ice water bath and really strong arms. Okay, I cheated on the arms part and gave in to the convenience of an electric whisk. If you even have the slightest intention of conjuring up choux pastry and its accompanying custard cream filling one day, then this you should know, there's going to be some seriously heavy duty stirring/whisking involved! So be prepared and muscle up your strong arm.

My ridge fetish

I don't want to mislead you into thinking that this was the first time I've ever attempted éclairs, oh no....I have made these puff, puff babies before. Once. My last flavor combination was lavender and black sesame éclairs with dulce de leche pastry cream filling. Quite the adventurous little missy I was, and I won't even waste your time explaining the rationale behind that feat. In short, those flavors worked amazingly well. You'll probably be relieved to know that this time round, the recipe in Dorie's book, 'Around My French Table' stated simply Vanilla Éclairs. Sadly, I had no excuse to go too far off the plot.

Saying that, however, I couldn't claim the right to call mine an adventurer's kitchen if I didn't at least try to explore other possibilities. So here are some things I did a bit differently to my heart's calling:

1. I used a star tip to pipe out my choux pastry because I actually like the beauty of ridges on my éclairs.

2. I opted for a bitter-ish, dark chocolate ganache glaze instead of the tart, sugary version suggested in the recipe. The ganache made for easy glazing, especially on the ridges. I just dipped the tops of the éclairs in the soft ganache and it spread very readily over and in between the ridges.

3. Apart from the vanilla flavored pastry cream, I also made additional chocolate and matcha cream fillings. It was easy, I just divided the vanilla cream into 3 equal portions, added melted chocolate to one and a teaspoon of matcha powder to the other. The third portion was left plain.

4. As I was preparing to fill the choux fingers, I had a lightning (haha) moment. Wouldn't it be a great idea to pipe two flavors into each éclair? Chocolate-vanilla. Vanilla-Matcha. Matcha-Chocolate. You get the idea. The execution wasn't as simple - I had to engineer a large enough piping bag out of heavy duty plastic ziplock, and fitted two little baby ziplocks in there filled with the different flavored pastry creams. Not a pretty sight as you can see below, but it worked. You can't tell from these photos but I actually had bi-flavored éclairs. It's nice to have a little bit of something for everyone, you know.

My makeshift ziplock piping bag for dispensing the double-flavored pastry cream!

5. It was raining a typical rainforest thunderstorm the day I made these so I knew there would be trouble as far as maintaining the puffiness of the pastry was concerned. Luckily, I'd burnt my fingers from hot ovens too many times just so I could gain this knowledge... which is, the best strategy for combating humidity is to let the cooked choux pastry dry and cool in the oven well after the stated cooking time. I simply turned off the heat, lodged a wooden spoon in the oven door (to keep it ajar) and left it for an hour. Guess what, the choux fingers stayed proudly puffy....not a single one had deflated.

Chocolate, vanilla, matcha or me?

So there you have it, a recount of my fairly uneventful (but plenty messy!) éclair attempt. The verdict from The Clan was super-thumbs up! Oh, the kids didn't really notice the double flavors so I managed to get them to down some matcha which is a sizeable achievement. If you wish to learn the recipe, you'll likely have to buy the book. After which, you might as well join along and cook with us. Take your pick of éclairs from the other FFWD bloggers here.