Well, as promised, here is the basic recipe for my choux pastry. You can use to it make eclairs, choux buns, Paris-Brest, French crullers...and even savoury appetizers.
I have made Eclairs because I had some vanilla cream left from the day I made Millefeuille and this stuff shouldn't stay more that 48h. Hence this idea of Eclairs with vanilla cream.
Choux pastry is one of those things you just need to learn, because it's a crowd pleaser and above all IT'S EASY TO MIX. well actually this is the best part!
One thing you want to be carefull about: weight your ingredients, especially the eggs.
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| Plain choux pastry |
Ingredients
For 15 medium size Eclairs Prep: 15 min/ Baking: 20 min
Pastry cream
1/2 of this batch
Choux pastry
- 80 g milk
- 80 g water
- 90 g flour
- 50 g butter
- 140 g of eggs (3 eggs)
- 1 tbsp of sugar
- 1 good pinch of salt
- 1 egg yolk for glazing + few drops of milk (I forgot)
Caramel for frosting
- 50 g of caster sugar
- 100 g of crème liquide (single cream)
- 30 g glucose
- 10g semi salted butter (beurre demi-sel) or normal butter with a pinch of fleur de sel
Preparation
The choux pastry: Prepare it few hours in advance.
Preheat oven to 200 ° C. In a saucepan, combine milk, water,
butter, sugar, salt. Bring to a boil. Turn off the heat and pour at once the
sifted flour.
Put back on medium heat and mix with a wooden spatula for
few seconds until the flour is well absorbed and a soft dough is starting to
form. Actually what’s happening is that the dough is drying up and start coming
off the pan.
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| The mixture before adding the eggs |
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| The dough is ready to be piped |
You must get a sort of dense creamy texture that should form a peak.
Put the dough in a pastry bag with a smooth tip (1 cm in diameter).
Line up 1 baking sheet with parchment paper. Pipe tubes or
rods-like of 10-12 cm in length. Equalize the surface with a wet knife.
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| Pipe the dough and leave space between each piece |
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| When you finish piping, use a wet knife to flatten the edge |
Brush the dough with egg yolk mixed with a few drops of
milk.
Bake for about twenty minutes: until it becomes light golden. Cool on wire rack.
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| I opened the Eclair from one side |
Keep refrigerated.
The caramel frosting
Melt the sugar in a heavy saucepan until it turns golden. Add the glucose and wait until it reaches 104 ° C. Add the cream 2-3 times in warm-hot (watch the bubbles) and mix until perfectly homogeneous. Add the butter, stir and let cool. The glaze should be used at room temperature or slightly higher but not much to keep it just about runny to work with.
Frost the Éclairs using a spatula or a spoon. Refrigerate and serve cold ideally.
