Vaughn Week 9 - Eclairs

 This past weekend I made eclairs. Eclairs originated from France around the early 1800s. Although it's not 100% proven, eclairs were invented by Marie-Antoine Carême, a pastry chef for French royalty. The french eclair meaning is “flash of lightning”, It was named this because eclairs are typically eaten quickly. 

The main ingredient, which is the dough, is called choux. Choux dough is used for many other pastries such as cream puffs, profiteroles, and churros. It was invented in 1540 in France by Pantanelli, who was the head chef of Catherine de Medici of Florence. The dough was simple and pretty easy to make, I had to make a few changes but it was basically a 2:1:1:2 ratio of water, butter, flour, and eggs.

Many of the online recipes I used said it could be hard to make, and I think this is because there are a lot of little factors that can easily mess it up, such as releasing too much steam when opening the oven for too long, or forgetting to poke holes in them once they're finished. The ones in the first batch did not come out right, but luckily on the 2nd batch I didn't forget any of the key details, so the whole process went smoothly even though it was still time-consuming. 

For the dough, you have to slowly combine the 2:1:1:2 ratio of water, butter, flour, and eggs, then once it gets into a slightly stiff ball, it has to go into a pastry bag. You then put the dough onto a cookie sheet in 1.5 X 4-inch strips. Once you bake them, you have to make the filling. The filling is just pudding mix, milk, vanilla extract, and confectioners sugar. Once you finish the filling, you cut the top off the pastry and fill it. Then you can put the chocolate icing on top and they're done.

Overall this recipe only took me a little under 2 hours which is surprising since I made a lot of them. They were much easier to make than I initially thought they would be, and I'd definitely make them again. I also learned a lot about french pastries and french culture throughout the process.  

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