Choux, choux!

Remember my dinner tweet? I know you all have been waiting for the recipe to go on my blog to spoil yourself the same way. And you know what? Today is your lucky day!

I made the Coffee Chocolate Éclairs together with my friend Betty on our weekly Wednesday meetings. It’s actually quite easy but takes some time. If you’ve never made choux pastry before you’ll be surprised how fast and easy it is.

But first you have to start with the filling. (If you don’t like coffee, check out my choux pastry eclairs with strawberries. So good as well!)

Coffee Cream:

250 ml cream
2 spoons coffee beans
1 teaspoon vanilla sugar
1 spoon powder sugar

Bring the cream and coffee beans to the boil. After cooking it for 3 mins, sieve the cream into a bowl and add the vanilla sugar. Put in the freezer for 30 mins or until cool but not frozen.

Whip the cream with the powder sugar until – uhm – it’s creamy whipped cream. (But only when the choux pastry is out of the oven and cooling down.)

Choux Pastry:

75 ml water
75 ml milk
60 g butter
90 g flour
2 eggs
a pinch of salt

Bring the water, milk and butter to the boil and mix in the flour until the whole mixture unsticks from the bottom of the pan. Only use a wooden spoon to stir!

Put it in a bowl and let it cool until handwarm, add one egg and stir until combined then add the other until the mixture is smooth but sticky.

Put it in a piping bag and pipe long, fat strings on a baking tray. They should look like huge caterpillars. Not very appitizing that image but you get the point. The taste will make up for it.

Put it into the preheated oven and bake for 25 mins on 200° C.  When you take them out of the oven make sure to cut them open immidiately that the moisture can vaporize.

It will cool down quite quickly and you can pipe in the coffee cream

Close the lid of the Éclair.

Chocolate ganache:

100 g chocolate
20 g butter
1 spoon water
2 heaped spoons powder sugar.

Melt the chocolate with the butter. Mix the water and powder sugar until smooth. Mix the chocolate with the sugar mixture and spread it on the Éclairs.

Voilá! Ce ça! ( Yeah, I know, my French is impressive.)

Now. Carry on!