The Daring Baker's challenge for August was to make chocolate eclairs from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Herme. We were given leeway with the filling or glaze, just one of them had to be chocolate. So I chose to do a rose cream filling instead of a chocolate one.
The elcairs baked up to perfection, nice and puffy and golden brown. The key is to make sure they are left in the oven long enough. If you remove them too early they will deflate and be too dense.
For a second, I thought I was going to create the perfect eclair...but my custard that I made a day in advance turned out to be extremely runny. I think the culprit was the rose water extract I added instead of the chocolate to make the custard. Either way it tasted fantastic, but there was no saving the eclairs for later. So my husband and I each had one right away, and I put the remaining unfilled eclairs in the fridge waiting to think of something to do with them...I experimented with a couple of shapes and tiny bite sized round puffs seemed the way to go for me.
Thanks to our hosts this month Tony Tahhan and MeetaK.Please visit their sites for a complete recipe!
