I've been a baaad, baaad Daring Baker!!!

Yes, yes! I'm guilty of being a horrid DBer for the past few months, skipping challenges left and right! As John Lennon sang, "Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans". Nevertheless, it's no excuse to let down my fellow DBers and skip challenges! So, this post will regale you the details of the August DB challenge: Pierre Herme's Chocolate Eclairs. Hey, it's better late than never, no? Also, I figure that I cannot skip a challenge that involves the DBers' sugah daddy, Pierre Herme. The recipe can be found in his book, Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme.

The whole process was quite simple. The recipe comes in three parts for the three different components: dough, pastry cream and glaze. I thought the most difficult part was trying to pipe in the pastry cream without having to split the baked and cooled choux. By the way, did you know that the eclair is a sort of French donut according to Wikipedia???


I thought that the eclair is already a perfect enough classic treat without trying to alter the recipe much. I mean, seriously, how can beat a creamy, sweet custard filling in a baked crisp yet soft dough topped with chocolate sauce? Seriously! So, the only variation that I did was to drizzle some melted white chocolate on top. Pretty?


Suffice to say, the eclairs didn't last long when I brought them to lab, where they were all snapped up by starving scientists. Thank goodness I had the sense to save some dough and baked up more choux. However, this time, I make profiteroles with them. Ok, so I was wrong before, you can beat the perfect eclair by filling the choux with ice cream! :D


Also, apologies for the overly gigantic pictures (for now). Photobucket isn't exactly cooperating...