Friday, April 15, 2011

FFWD - Vanilla Eclairs


Vanilla Eclairs, or as I like to call them, French Pastry 101.


When I saw Vanilla Eclairs on the French Fridays with Dorie list for April I thought to myself, "Holy crap, we are getting serious now!"


Reading through the instructions it struck me that this really three basic French pastry basics; cream puff dough (or pate a choux), pastry cream, and ganache. I have successfully made all three of these individual recipes before so there wasn't any reason I couldn't do it again and smoosh them all together to create a classic pastry.


The cream puff dough came together beautifully. I didn't have the correct pastry tip so I just used the pastry bag sans tip to create the eclairs. My eclairs cooked more quickly than Dorie indicated they would and I had to pull them out before using the wooden spoon to wedge the oven door open trick.


The pastry cream was a breeze to make and I had a tray full of filled eclairs in no time. I opted to make a chocolate ganache frosting to finish the eclairs. Consisting of only two ingredients, the ganache should have been the easiest component to execute. Lesson learned: you can't use milk, even whole milk, in place of cream when making ganache. I knew it was a long shot but finding myself out of cream and preparing to leave for a trip the next morning, I decided to take a gamble. My frosting was more glaze than frosting and sort of seeped into the delicate pastry. The taste was fine but the end result was less attractive than I had hoped for and quite messy to eat.


All in all, this was a fun recipe to try and I feel quite fancy saying I can make eclairs! To check out how the rest of the Doristas did this week, visit French Fridays with Dorie.
Pin It!

14 comments:

  1. This one was a little easier than some version I tried before, but I probably don't have the patience to do this often (although, I am sure the peeps wish I would).
    Glad you enjoyed your "smoosh"!

    ReplyDelete
  2. You know, I like the drizzled glaze look of your frosting. Great gamble!

    ReplyDelete
  3. This was my first attempt at eclairs and I feel quite fancy too!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yeayyy...we've all successfully attempted eclairs! And I'm loving the fact that there are so many variations just within the FFWD group, including your tasty-looking ones!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Mine were drizzled in chocolate ganache too :) your éclairs look good, messy deliciousness sounds good to me!

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hey, these wouldn't be great if you didn't have to lick all that chocolately goodness off your fingers! They look terrific!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. The pastry cream was plenty rich- I'm sure the glaze was wonderful on these!

    ReplyDelete
  8. I think the chocolate drizzled on the eclairs looks great! And I'm sure so yummy!

    ReplyDelete
  9. I love that you've made each step on it's own so it wasn't so daunting for you. And then you created a wonderful product. A little jealous....
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  10. They look great! Mine had some problems.

    ReplyDelete
  11. They look wonderful, Candy. I would sure love one of those right now!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Great picture! Definitely looks like it made for some delightfully messy eating.

    ReplyDelete
  13. It seems like the mess was worth it, they look delicious!

    ReplyDelete

Tell me what ya think!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...