Chocolate Eclairs

So I go through all the trouble of making amazing prime rib last week, and what do my guests say after they devour the roast beast?  "What's for dessert?"  What ungracious....

Now I'm put on the spot.  I sarcastically jab back, "What do you want?  Creme brulee?"  They say, "Yes."

Well now I'm up a creek...  Julia Child, don't fail me now...  So I turn to Julia's quintessential work on French cooking and lo and behold, there's a recipe, however it calls for heavy cream and all I have is whole milk.  I figure I'll give it a shot.  We ate sweet scrambled eggs.  They didn't taste ba'ad (that's bad with two syllables, which means it wasn't good either).

A week later, while my lovely wife was at work, I asked her if she would like me to have dinner ready for her when she got home.  She quaintly replies, "No thanks, I packed a dinner, but dessert would be lovely.  Why don't you try creme brulee again?"  Pfft... the nerve.

I turn back to Julia and try to decipher where I went wrong.  I start scratching my head and my brain doesn't like where things are headed, so I turn the page and see the recipe for "creme patissiere", also known as custard filling.  I look at it and it actually involves boiling the sauce... like you want this to happen.   Note:  If you boil what is supposed to become creme brulee, you get sweet scrambled eggs.  I figure I'm pro at this.

Custard filling, what has custard filling?  Eclairs.  Deal.  How do I make the pastry?  A quick google search finds me a recipe involving boiling water and adding flour to that.  I figure this must be ridiculous, so I turn to the book entitled Ratio by Michael Ruhlman.  It calls for a similar tactic.  Boiling, right.  I'm good at that.  We can do this.

The last step is the chocolate sauce on top.  Do I need gnoche?  sauce?  hershey squirts?  Wait... that's gross...  I decide to modify a recipe I used for iced Christmas cookies this winter which would harden slightly as the cookies dried.  Alright.  I think I'm ready.

The pastry:  Pate a Choux
(you must say this with a terrible Americanized-French accent)

According to Mr. Ruhlman, 2 parts water : 1 part butter : 1 part flour : 2 parts egg.

Preheat the oven to 450°F

Combine the following and bring to a boil

one cup water
half cup butter
half tsp salt

Over low heat, add one cup flour while rapidly stirring to form a batter-like substance.  This should take about a minute.

Remove from heat and cool for two minutes, then transfer this mess to the food processor.

Add one egg at a time while pulsing the food processor until incorporated for a total of four eggs.

Transfer this mess to a ziploc bag and cut off a corner to turn it into a pastry bag.  Or use a pastry bag if you have one.

On parchment paper, pipe out whatever size pastry you would like.  I did about 3" across pastries, which seemed to work well enough.  Place this in the oven and bake for ten minutes.  After ten minutes, reduce the heat to 350°F and cook for another twenty minutes.  Pastry complete.  On to the filling.

Creme Patissiere a la Julia Child
(This must be said in the soft-pallet high-sigh for which Julia is so famous)

Rinse out the food processor, it's getting some work done.

Blend five egg yolks and one cup of sugar until "the ribbons" form - it turns pale yellow...

Add in a half cup of flour and blend until incorporated

Heat up two cups of milk in the microwave to boiling in a pour-able vessel - whenever I heat milk in a pan, I get skin on the bottom unless I stir it constantly - too much work...

With the processor running, slowly pour the hot milk into the egg mixture.  You don't want to scramble the eggs...

Get out a heavy bottomed, non-teflon pan and put it over medium heat.  Pour in the mixture and begin whisking.  You must continue to whisk, and whisk, and whisk.  This will go on until it begins to boil, and then you must whisk for two minutes more.  All in all, it's a lot of whisking.

One this is complete, add one Tbs of butter and one and a half Tbs of vanilla extract and whisk until smooth.  Many other flavors can be added at this point, but I kept it simple.

Let it cool for twenty minutes in the freezer before trying to put it in the pastry.  It will thicken a little.

Now to get it into the pastry.  I don't know how the pros do it, but I put the custard in a small ziploc bag, inserted a straw in one corner, and taped around the opening.

It worked fairly well, though I'm guessing there's a better way to accomplish it.  This is how I did it, so go fly a kite if you don't like it.

Fill up a pastry with custard.  Enough Said.

The Chocolate Icing by Tim
(this must be said in a very low voice, trust me)

I don't have exact amounts for you, so I'll guess.

Let's try
one cup of powdered sugar
half a cup of powdered chocolate
two Tbs of milk

Whisk this all together... you're favorite

Add a quarter Tsp of vanilla extract
one Tbs of light corn syrup

Whisk some more

Taste and adjust

Drizzle on top of your custard filled pastry and enjoy.

Eat well.

Maybe Hershey squirts weren't so far off...