I am SO happy with how these éclairs turned out! Choux pastry has always been a hit or miss area in my baking – I’ve never found a perfect recipe to use as the basis of my choux baking… until now (woo)!
I came across this choux recipe in an article from Vogue. The article gives recipes for Summer éclairs, written by Joakim Prat a.k.a the GOD of the éclair world, better known by his specialist patisserie Maitre Choux. The South Kensington patisserie has such a colourful, chic and tempting display, and is my inspiration for this bake!
The choux recipe comes from Joakim himself. However, the filling and topping is my own. 🙂
These éclairs really are special. They are light, fruity and definitely more-ish. They are also sooo cute and pretty ❤
I really hope you give this recipe a go, its a great one if you haven’t attempted choux before 🙂 The choux recipe can be found below, or here straight from the Vogue article.
Ingredients: (I halved the original recipe from the article, which gave me around 20 big eclairs)
- 100g whole milk
- 150g water
- 120g butter
- 5g caster sugar
- 4g salt
- 188g plain flour
- 250g eggs (approx. 5)
Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 180ºC, with no fan. Line 2 baking trays.
Place your milk, water, butter, sugar and salt in a medium sized pan and bring to the boil. As soon as it starts to bubble, add your flour and beat well with a spatula for one minute – until the dough no longer sticks to the side of the pan.
Take the pan off the heat and add the eggs one at a time, beating firmly in between. You may not need to use all 250g of eggs – if the dough is too thick, all the egg must be added. However it may be too runny if too much egg is added, which results in the eclairs sinking in the oven. Judging the consistency of the choux is extremely challenging for amateur bakers, but don’t worry! The article gives a really good tip which worked perfectly for me, “trace a deep line into the choux pastry with your spatula. If the line closes up slowly, then it’s ready!”.
Place the dough into a piping bag, I fitted mine with a large star nozzle. Pipe your choux dough onto your lined trays in straight, neat lines. Bake for 35 mins, and then leave to cool.
For the filling, I whipped 330ml of double cream with the zest of half a large lemon. I also added a the juice of half the lemon, and some natural yellow food colouring to give the filling a nice pastel colour. Finally, I folded in 3tsp. of raspberry jam into the whipped cream.
Once the eclairs are cooled, gently slice the top of the choux off the eclair, horizontally. This may seem a bit strange, but this makes filling the eclairs extremely easy. I piped mine in with a piping bag. You should now have a filled eclair without a top.
Next, its time to make the meringue to cover the top of the eclair 🙂
Place 2 egg whites, 100g of caster sugar and a teaspoon of corn flour in a clean bowl. Whisk until stiff peaks are formed! Place your meringue in a piping bag, I fitted mine with a flat-edged nozzle, but you can pick an nozzle you like! Pipe your meringue however you fancy 🙂
Save the best until last.. It’s time to blow torch your eclairs! Gently flame your meringue with a blow torch until it turns golden brown 🙂 If you don’t have a blow torch, you can pop the eclairs under the grill quickly, but remember theres fresh cream inside! I finished my eclairs with a slice of lemon, a small piece of raspberry and a rose petal 🙂
I hope you love this bake!
Enjoy, Sofia ❤ xxxxx
sofiabakes.com 
These look yummy and you make it seem simple too! A recipe that I will have to try.
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