KAF #bakealong – Dark Chocolate Eclairs

This is my second KAF (King Arthur Flour) #bakealong and the recipe for February 2017 is Dark Chocolate Eclairs…

I gave these to my husband for Valentine’s Day. Then, I ate half of them. For health reasons. His, not mine. Yes, I am lying! About the health reasons, not the eating. I ate them, and they were delicious. I regret nothing!

Anyway, they were excellent. I thought they were extremely easy to make, the instructions were clear and I didn’t struggle at any point with what I was supposed to be doing or do next. However, I did choose to go the optional suggested route of vanilla pastry cream instead of the chocolate pictured on the website.

• The pastry was lovely and crisp. It puffed up beautifully and gave me no problems. I used a plastic bag with the corner snipped as my piping bag and then wet my finger and smoothed out any peaks. I managed 17 shells and ate one unfilled… just because.
• The glaze was just the right consistency, it wasn’t overly sweet and it was lovely and shiny. However, the recipe made about double what I needed. I still have the other half in my fridge. Next time, I’ll half the recipe for the glaze.
• The pastry cream recipe made a very delicious, not to sweet, perfect consistency pastry cream for the filling. Unfortunately, there was nowhere enough to fill them! I had 16 eclairs, I could have nicely filled maybe 12? The instructions said to half the recipe and not to fold in the whipped cream into the pastry cream at the end. Since I had some cream from making the glaze I was going to (who doesn’t love an overstuffed pastry?) but I decided I’d stick to the instructions because I had not used the recipe before. Now, I wished I’d followed my instincts. So, if when I  make this again, I’ll use the full recipe of pastry cream and leave out the whipped cream at the end as suggested. I think the full recipe would be the right amount for 16 eclairs.

I highly recommend this recipe. It is now my go-to recipe for eclairs and when I make them again I’ll either update this post or add the update to my 1st of the month post.

If you want to participate or would like to try the recipe yourself, HERE is the link to the KAF #bakealong page.