Chocolate Eclairs - Another Daring Baker Adventure

Well, things have been busy at work and with summer weekends so I am going to keep this post a little short. I finally found time to fit in my second ever Daring Baker challenge for the month of August - Chocolate Eclairs, hosted by Meeta K , a Daring Baker. The recipe consists of three parts: a pate a choux (too nice out to bother with the special characters, sorry), pastry cream, and chocolate glaze.

I made these on Saturday at my parents' house while we were smoking some ribs. Actually I had baked the little pate a choux fingers at my house and then put them in a tupperware, which was not the "cool and dry" storage I had expected it to be... (the little guys have moisture in them and being locked up made for a steamy storage!) They still stayed reasonably puffy and were plenty tasty to fill with a new kind of filling my mom and I had wanted to try, marshmallow butter cream, and also topped with a ganache chocolate topping.

I strayed quite a bit from the original recipe but from what I understood with the Daring Baker "rules", we just had to keep 1 of the two - filling or topping - a chocolate one. I stuck with the printed pate a choux recipe, which came together pretty easy.

The whole recipe can be found here on Meeta's website,, so I will skip writing it out. It was a recipe from Pierre Herme's book "Chocolate Desserts."

The pate a choux (a dough used for many pastries, including cream puffs..) seemed like it was a little lumpy in my mixer but they recipe held true and it did come together smoothly. It also filled my pastry bag up to the rim so next time I'd wait and fill my bag in two shifts. I made all different kinds of shapes of "chubby fingers" and also some round ones for cream puffs, which The Husband prefers with ice cream. I baked them according to the directions and as expected, the larger shapes that I made did take a few extra minutes to "golden up."

After whipping up some Marshmallow buttercream and some chocolate ganache at my parents' house, it was time to cut these little fingers open and fill and top them! We ran out of the marshmallow cream and my mom wanted to try fresh heavy cream whipped with vanilla and sugar. We all agreed this was a better flavor with the pate a choux combination.

Over all, this was a good experience and was my first time trying a pate a choux by myself and "the right way" so I would be happy to do it again in the future. Thanks for a great challenge!

Marshmallow Buttercream
as seen on Martha Stewart and online in other recipes

1 stick softened butter
1 jar of marshmallow cream, 7-8oz
splash of vanilla
powdered sugar, to taste, up to 1 cup

Cream the butter with a hand mixer and then beat in the marshmallow cream. Flavor with vanilla or another extract of your choice and add powdered sugar to increase sweetness to your taste, possibly up to a cup. Use for cupcake or cake filling or as a frosting. Very easy and pretty tasty.