Éclair with Custard and Chocolate

   Try and fail, but don't fail to try, If at first you do succeed, try something harder, anf if you fail try once, twice and again till you succeed. That's what I've learned from today's dish. Today's recipe is so special, it's one of the recipes that you can call challenging ease, Eclair is a french dessert made from a dough called pâte à choux, filled with custard or Crème pâtissière and covered with melt chocolate. In fact everyone tastes this dessert from my mother's hands likes it so much and no one does without asking her to make eclair everytime they visit even my friends, and because I love cooking so much that was like a challenge for me, I wanted to be like my mother, I wanted to make eclairs in a perfect way, but to be honest with you, I failed at making eclair THREE times, yes three times and was so close to giving up, as the most thing that annoys me is to fail at cooking something or get a bad result not as I expected, but when I knew the secret of making eclair it became one of the easiest and quickest desserts for me to make (not like it seems to be for some people and I was one of them).

    My mother used to make this dessert without using any mixers or kitchen machines, so I used to see it as hard work because she use to make large amount and mix the eggs one at a time with a wooden spoon till it's well mixed in the dough, and believe that really needs tough muscles (you wouldn't know what I mean till you try it yourselves), and that was one thing that I gave up when making eclairs as I just use my food processor to mix the eggs in the dough, and what helps me here is that I usually make small amount not like my mother as I don't think there's any stand mixer or food prcessor can be enough for the amount she makes because there are many people waiting for her to finish so they eat her eclairs :). The second thing that helped me is the secret that I've discover for this dough which I'm going to write it down for you with detailed steps with step-by-step photos for making eclair without any hard work or failure God welling.

Recipe Tips:

1- The most important thing is the amount of eggs you use, never use the any amount that any recipe calls for with blind eyes, you have to make sure as the eggs are different in size and the flour is not the same for everyone, so it's the texture of the dough that tells you to stop adding eggs or to add more, as it suppose to be sticky but not runny, easy to shape with piping bag without melting and without being tough, so it's between this and that, so you add one egg at a time and mix to see, in this same recipe I sometimes use 3 and sometimes 4 eggs, so don't stick to it.

2- If it's hard for you to determine the texture of the dough, you can test one eclair in the oven to see if it's ok or tough which means it needs more egg.

3- You can use half milk half water instead of all water like the recipe here (don't recommend all milk).

4- As I said before the dough is sticky so you need to first grease the piping bag from the inside and also the baking sheet only with oil if it's non stick or with oil and flour if it's an ordinary one.

5- You can use any cocolate you like to cover the dessert, as for me I LOVE Nutella :).

Recipe serves: 20 medium eclairs approx.

Prep. Time: 15 minutes.

Baking Time: 27 to 35 minutes

Ingredients:

For pate a choux dough:

1 cup water

1 1/4 cup flour

100 gm butter (1 stick)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

3 large eggs & one egg white

The Filling:

Ready made custard.

Nutella or you favorate chocolate melt with butter

Directions:

1- Preheat the oven 200 degrees celcuse, boil the water and then add the butter, salt and sugar and boil.

2- Once the the butter is melted and the mixture is boiling add all the flour at once and mix quickly with a wooden spoon till it forms a dough lie this and stir for about 2 to 3 minutes.

3- Place the dough in the food processor and add vanilla, eggs and egg white one egg at a time and mix till you get the right texture.

4- Grease the baking sheet and the piping bag, if you don't have a piping bag you can use ordinary nylon bag and cut the corner 1.5 cm and form the dough like fingers.

5- Using a fork make stripes on the fingers like so.

6- Place it into the oven and bake for about 27 to 35 minutes till it gets a nice golden color and cooked from the inside, you can take one out and test it.

7- While baking eclairs prepare the custard  and chocolate, and when the eclairs are ready let them cool for a while, see how fluffy and beautiful they get after baking!

8- Open the eclairs like sandwiches and fill them with custard, cover with chocolate, serve happy Valentine's Day everyone, and.... Bon Appétit :)