Tuesday, 15 May 2012

My Easy Chocolate Eclairs







makes 24 eclairs of about 10cm long

For the Choux buns
250 ml boiling water
125 ml butter
250 ml cake flour
3 jumbo eggs or 4 large

For the filling
250 ml cream - whipped
2 tbsp caster sugar
100gr dark chocolate - melted

Preheat the oven to 180C. Prepare a baking sheet by spraying it with non-stick spray or lining it with baking paper. Boil the water in a small pot and add the butter and allow to melt. Add all the cake flour in at once and stir with a wooden spoon until the mixture comes away from the sides of the pot. Remove from the heat and place the mixture in the bowl of your mixer. Beat the flour mixture for about 1 minute so that it can cool and then add the eggs one by one, beating in between each addition of eggs. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag and pipe 10cm long choux buns on the baking paper. Bake for 25 minutes, remove from the oven and make a small cut on the side of each choux bun to release the steam. Place back in the oven, with heat now reduced to 160C. Bake for another 5 minutes or until choux buns have now hardened. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack.
Keep in an airtight container until needed.

To fill: Whip the cream with the caster sugar and pipe into the choux buns. Melt the chocolate in a small bowl over a pot of hot water and then dip each eclair into the chocolate. One the eclairs are filled they do not stay hard for long, so do not make to long in advance.


Nina Timm