Homemade Eclairs
Ingredients
Dough
- 125 g water
- 1/2 tsp sugar
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 55 g butter
- 70 g flour
- 3 small eggs
Pastry Cream
- 50 cl milk
- 1 vanilla pod
- 6 egg yolks
- 120 g sugar
- 50 g cornmeal Maïzena
- 50 g butter
Icing
- 250 g white fondant
- 5 cl water
Instructions
Pastry Cream
- Cut the vanilla pod in half.
- Cook the milk and the split vanilla pod over medium heat. Leave to infuse for 10 minutes before you take the vanilla pod out.
- While the milk is simmering, whisk together the egg yolks, the sugar and the cornmeal.
- Now bring the vanilla milk to the boil again and add a third to the egg, sugar, cornmeal mix. (To get a better result pour the milk through a sieve.)
- Then add the rest of the milk to the mix. After this, put the whole back into the sauce pan and cook on a high heat.
- Whisk continuously and as soon as the milk-mix gets thick take the sauce pan off the hotplate.
- Pour the hot pastry cream on cling-film and wrap it carefully, then put it into the fridge.
Dough
- Preheat the oven to 180°
- Put the water, the sugar, the salt and the butter into a saucepan and cook on a middle heat.
- As soon as it starts boiling take it off the hotplates and add the flour little by little. Don't stop whisking for 30 seconds until the dough has become dry.
- Now put the saucepan back on the hotplates and mix quickly until you get a smooth paste.
- Take the saucepan off the hotplates and add the eggs one by one.
- Fill the icing bag with the eclair dough. Make sure you have an about 8mm wide indented pastry tube.
- Place little rolls of about 10-12 cm on the baking sheet.
- Bake for 25-30 minutes without circulating air.
- Let cool completely before filling them with the pastry cream
Icing
- For the icing, heat the fondant and the water to 35°. Take it off the hotplates and immediately start icing the éclair shells.
- Get the pastry cream out of the fridge. Whisk it again in order to get a smooth and even cream.
- Cut the eclairs in two, then take the bottom half of the éclair and pipe a generous layer of filling, starting from one end and working your way to the other.
- Carefully place the iced top half of the éclair back onto the filled bottom half. Press gently to set it in place without squeezing the filling out.
- Enjoy!!!!