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[kellichou]

So yesterday evening, Linnea and I made the most grelicious chocolate eclairs.  From scratch.

We used Fannie Farmer's recipes for pate a choux (the dough that becomes magically hollow when you bake it, discovered in Renaissance times, I hear) and Bavarian cream to fill 'em.  Topped with a decadent chocolate ganache, made with the 60% cacao double chocolate chips from Ghiradelli and heavy cream.  Magical.

Pate a Choux.  I think the secret is briefly cooking the ball o' dough.  Seriously.  We had issues with getting the dough stiff enough, and I think it hearkens back to not cooking the flour enough (so it'll expand later, making a dough that is stiff and will hold its shape).  After making 2 batches of the dough and experimenting, I've put my italicized comments in.  Disclaimer:  we made this at high altitude.

All right, Pate a Choux!  From Fannie Farmer.
Set the oven at 425 degrees Fahrenheit.  Put in a saucepan:
1/2 cup boiling water
1/4 cup butter

Heat until the butter melts [Note:  it should probably be boiling]
Add, all at once,
1/2 cup sifted all-purpose flour.
Stir hard until the dough forms a ball in the center of the pan.  [I think that means a few minutes' stirring on the burner]  Remove from the heat and let stand 5 minutes.  Add
1 egg
Beat until well blended. [I think that means to beat the hell out of it.  I hear that pate a choux really can't be overbeaten]  Add
1 egg.
Beat as before.  The mixture should be very stiff.  If it is not, let it stand 10 minutes before shaping.  [I found that spooning the dough into a ziplock bag and putting it in the refrigerator, 20 minutes or more, also helped]
Take up by spoonfuls and arrange on a cooky sheet, 2 inches apart.  Use a tablespoon for larger puffs, a teaspoon for small ones.  For eclairs:  shape in finger-shaped oblongs, 1 by 4 1/2 inches.  For perfect shaping, use a pastry bag and tube.  I used a wet spatula to help make the free edge perfect.

Bake until there are NO beads of moisture on the puffs, about 20 minutes for small puffs.  For large puffs, reduce the heat after 20 minutes and continue baking 10 to 20 minutes or until the puffs are firm and crusty.

If the puffs are not baked long enough, they will be soft rather than crisp.  Test by taking one out of the oven.  If it does not flatten down, the puffs are done.

Slit puffs with a sharp knife to let out the steam so that the puffs will be dry inside.  [note:  we split open the puffs & eclairs while hot, pulled out doughy bits inside, and briefly returned them to the oven so that the insides would be nice and dry.  Worked well.

Cool.  Fill with ice cream, whipped cream, or any cream filling.  Makes 8 large puffs, 18 or more small ones.

~~~

Bavarian Cream

Mix in a saucepan
1 envelope gelatin (1 tablespoon)
Few grains salt
1/4 cup sugar

In a mixing bowl, beat together until well blended
2 egg yolks
1 1/4 cups milk

Add to the gelatin mixture.  Cook and stir over low heat until the gelatin dissolves (about 5 minutes).  Add
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
Chill until the mixture begins to stiffen. Note:  mixture will appear curdled.  For uniform gelling, I beat it smooth before adding the beaten egg whites.
Beat until in soft peaks
2 egg whites
Beat in, a little at a time,
1/4 cup sugar
Fold into the gelatin mixture.  Fold in
1/2 pint heavy cream, beaten stiff.

Mold in individual molds or one large mold.  Unmold and garnish or flavor as suggested for Spanish Cream.  Serves 6.  We tried piping the cream into the eclairs, as well as spooning it in.  Personally, given the nice firm texture of the Bavarian cream, I think carefully spooning it in gives better structural results.  But either way, it's freakin' delicious.

~~~

The ganache I made:
heat 2/3 cup heavy cream in a saucepan over medium heat until tiny bubbles appear around the edges.  Turn off heat, add 12 oz. of Ghiradelli 60% cacao chocolate chips.  Stir.  Mixture will be lumpy.  Slowly add more cream (room temperature or chilled), stirring well, until mixture is thick and glossy.  Spread on tops of filled eclairs with a spoon.  Chill, uncovered, until ganache is set.

[side_show]

Good lord... you're brilliant.  But something this rich less than a week after Christmas... no.  They sound lovely though. 

I am not a baker.  I don't like baking, and almost never do, but I love to cook.  Are both of you into baking?  I know lots of people who gravitate to one or the other.  I wonder why that is?  Baking is more of a science, cooking more of an art, though there's plenty of the other in each.  I'm also not a sweets/dessert person, so maybe that corralates.  I will spend 8 hours making a meal from scratch, but the idea of baking over that long a period isn't for me.  But I definitely have friends who are the opposite. 

Also, I ate a lot of pastry both times I was in Belgium, so I sort of think it's pointless to try - nothing will ever be that good.

[jaydub]

Baking seems to require the patience of a saint, and the thick skin of an NFL cornerback.  You have to fail so many times before you get something right that most of us end up in a flour-dusted fetal position.  Pie crusts is about as fancy as I've managed.  Also bread.

[linnea]

I enjoy both baking and cooking. We had a great time making the éclairs. I was under the impression that they'd be hell of difficult, so I brought over my roommate's KitchenAid stand mixer, with permission. You really don't need it, mixing the pâte à choux dough by hand is relatively easy.

Kelli did most of the work and all the assembly. I made the choux the first time, and was deceived at how runny the dough was. I ended up doubling the flour, which was a huuuuge mistake - the pastry came out tough, thick, and not at all like the light and airy second batch that Kelli made. We had to increase the flour by nearly 50% to get a decent result, but sea-level altitudes should be able to get away with the classical recipe. The dough will be runny and very thin, more like a batter than a dough. Rest assured that the éclairs or cream puffs will rise anyway.

Like Pat says in the Achewood cookbook, baking is a science, and you have to follow recipes exactly, similar to replicating a laboratory experiment. Sadly for high altitude dwellers, we have to take a few liberties here and there to keep our baked goods from falling miserably. It's always a crapshoot, baking at high altitude.

EDIT: Kelli, do you think that using extra-large eggs skewed our results and gave us a runnier dough? Maybe the French use titchy-small eggs?

[kellichou]

Yes, it is over-the-top in richness, but so awesome.  It was like fulfilling a childhood dream, all making complimacated French desserts.  And yes, I love baking (like cooking a lot too, especially one of my faves, Thai food, such as Thai lamb with chilli and mint, served with jasmine rice and chilli ginger stir fried vegetables).  I guess I just like creating food.  It's chemistry you can do at home!

Good lord... you're brilliant.  But something this rich less than a week after Christmas... no.  They sound lovely though. 

Baking is more of a science, cooking more of an art, though there's plenty of the other in each.  I'm also not a sweets/dessert person, so maybe that corralates. 

But you can come close--but you're absolutely right, all the food we had in Belgium was absolutely awesome.  I had Indonesian food for the first time, by a dude in Antwerp, a Dutch/Belgian colonist who had grown up there.  The food was amazing!  And of course, let's not forget the pastries and chocolates.  Ahhh!  But I was surprised and pleased with how they came out.  I <4 Fannie Farmer, basically.  I need to get me some of Julia Child's cookbooks, given my love of French cuisine.  I also need some of those Proustian cookbooks, where people have gone through Proust's work and found all the amazing dishes mentioned in the novel, particularly those created by the lovely Francoise, the foul-kind servant who created edible works of art.

Also, I ate a lot of pastry both times I was in Belgium, so I sort of think it's pointless to try - nothing will ever be that good.

[kellichou]

EDIT: Kelli, do you think that using extra-large eggs skewed our results and gave us a runnier dough? Maybe the French use titchy-small eggs?

Daaaaaammmmmittt!

Yeff, you're probably 100% right!  Because yes, they used titchy-small eggs (OMG!  Wombie Brain Link!  I totally would've used that word too)!

[linnea]

The dough was plenty stiff when I added the flour to the butter and made a roux-type deal, but adding the eggs is when it all went downhill.

[wombat]

I don't think Fannie Farmer is French... the real issue is that all American cookbooks use large eggs as the standard size for baking.

That's a big project. I only ever made eclairs when I worked as a baker, some millions of years ago. So while I have done a lot of home baking, that's one I feel like I wouldn't do unless I was getting paid for it. Just as well because God knows I don't need to personally eat a dozen eclairs. The Technical Staff would eat one and then forget they existed, bless his heart. I don't know how he does it. They'd be crying out to me from the kitchen 24 hours a day till they were gone.

[kellichou]

Yeh, I should've connected those thoughts for those outside my head. . . I know FF isn't French (she's a famous American, because her cookbooks were the first to use standardized measurements, at least here in the US).

Because many of the recipes in FF are so old and/or non-American (like the pate a choux recipe), I figure the eggs called for in the recipe weren't the Large eggs we know and use today in the US.

I don't think Fannie Farmer is French... the real issue is that all American cookbooks use large eggs as the standard size for baking.

[theinevitable]

I need to learn to cook some meals. This is another thing I want to do this year.
This year, I learned that eggs can be good with pasta (pasta carbonara), but that does not mean they will be good in pasta with tomato sauce. HORRIBLE MISTAKE.

[CortJstr]

I remember Alton saying that French recipes will often omit a step saying to bring your eggs to room temperature, because they don't refrigerate their eggs to begin with. And apparently in some recipes cold eggs make a difference.

[KeithHernandez]

I need to learn to cook some meals. This is another thing I want to do this year.
This year, I learned that eggs can be good with pasta (pasta carbonara), but that does not mean they will be good in pasta with tomato sauce. HORRIBLE MISTAKE.

Oh Jesus!

[theinevitable]

ok, I'm exaggerating. The pasta was OK, but... not great. The taste was bearable.

[KeithHernandez]

I don't know, that sounds pretty horrible.

[wombat]

OMG, no, that sounds so horrible that I must wrangle the thread back to part of the original topic...

Even if it's a French dish, the point of an American cookbook is to transfer it to American measurements. That's the author's job. Like, the amounts of flour in that recipe are in cups, not by weight like they cook everywhere else in the world.  So you don't want to know the size of eggs in France. A thorough, all-purpose cookbook like FF should say somewhere what size eggs are being assumed. If they don't the American standard is large.

I also see from the wonders of the internet that if you move to Britain and bring all your cookbooks, be careful about baking because apparently their eggs sizes are different. Their large is the size of our extra large. So even if you did know the size of eggs mentioned in French recipes you'd have to find a chart that told you what they meant by small or large. Very sneaky.

I am too lazy to walk downstairs to get a cookbook but if you believe the internet, a large egg is 2 oz and an extra large is 2 1/4 oz. So that's a half oz extra egg for a recipe with two eggs, which is a fairly large percentage.

OK, that's more than anyone needs to know about egg sizes but hopefully now we've all forgotten about that pasta.