August Daring Bakers: Chocolate Eclairs

This month's challenge came from Meeta of What's for Lunch, Honey?. It was chocolate eclairs! I was excited because while I have made savory pate a choux dough for gougeres, I'd never made a sweet version before. This recipe had three components:

1. Pate a choux: This is the pastry dough, and it's really interesting because it's cooked on the stove before the oven! I had a little trouble with this component. First, my pastry tip fell out of my pastry bag while I was piping because I cut the hole too big! Oops. So I ended up more with blobs rather than long eclairs. :) Of course, they taste the same either way! Then, although they rose impressively in the oven, they ultimately deflated. I don't think the ultimate texture was right, but they were tasty!

2. Chocolate glaze: This glaze for the top of the eclairs was very complicated, but also delicious! It was also great reheated over ice cream and, whipped with a little butter and powdered sugar, an excellent icing for cupcakes! (There was lots left over, so I got to experiment with lots of different uses.)

3. Chocolate pastry cream: Possibly the food of the gods. There was also lots of this left over, but I have just been eating it plain out of the fridge like pudding! Triple yum.

Ultimately, although my eclairs didn't turn out perfectly, I did love the way they tasted and I would definitely make the chocolate glaze and pastry cream again for another use. Thanks for a great challenge, Meeta! Be sure to check out all the other cakes this month at the Daring Bakers Blogroll (link in sidebar to the right).

The recipe is available here.