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Chocolate Éclairs With Egg Free Orange Cardamom and Mocha Pastry Creams : Daring Bakers Challenge August 2008

Its another Daring Bakers challenge and this time its something French. Our hosts this month, Meeta of What’s For Lunch, Honey? and Tony of Tony Tahhan set us to bake some chocolate
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Course Dessert
Cuisine French

Ingredients
  

Egg Free Mocha Pastry Cream:

  • 3 tbsps sugar
  • 3 tbsps cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chopped up bittersweet
  • 1 1/2 tbsps salted butter
  • 3 tsps coffee instant powder (dissolved in 2 tsp milk)

Egg Free Orange Cardamom Pastry Cream:

  • 3 tbsps sugar
  • 3 tbsps cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup chocolate chopped up white
  • 1 1/2 tbsps salted butter
  • 3 tsps orange rind
  • 1 tsp orange essence
  • 1/2 tsp cardamom powdered

Instructions
 

  • In the case of both the pastry creams, melt the chocolate and butter in a pan over hot water. In another pan, dissolve the sugar in the milk (and coffee for the mocha version) and bring to boil. Take the milk mixture off the heat. Add the melted chocolate and the corn starch dissolved in 3 tbsp of milk. Whisk well till everything is blended. Add the remaining ingredients and put back on the stove and keep whisking till the pastry cream thickens. Cool and refrigerate till needed. This pastry cream pipes well.
  • Chocolate Glaze: I used the recipe given, with the chocolate sauce, but halved the quantity and used 25% fat cream instead of heavy cream which is not available here.
  • Assembling the xe9clairs: No problems here, just followed the instructions. It was when I was piping the pastry cream into the xe9clairs that I realized that the cavities inside them can hold a whole lot of pastry cream!
  • I used a chocolate glaze for the orange cardamom pastry cream filled ones and a white chocolate glaze for those filled with mocha pastry cream. I just lightly dusted the filled profiteroles with powdered sugar. You can see my profiteroles have become a bit soft due to the humidity.

Notes

Ok, so I can make a good Choux pastry now, and without getting the “Choux on my shoes” as Alton Brown would say! I also have a recipe for Egg Free Pastry cream now. Not bad, I guess.
Despite reducing one egg, we still got an “eggy” taste and smell from the éclairs, though the”eggy” taste did diminish a bit after filling the éclairs. So I don’t think I would make these, unless I can find an egg free recipe or one that uses maybe 1 egg, but I guess then it wouldn’t be quite a Choux pastry.
Personally, even then, I’m not sure I would be able to manage the amount of pastry cream that goes into each even with the temptation of the chocolate. But I’m sure my husband and daughter would definitely be ready to try the eggless version. I’m going to be checking the eggless versions that our alternative/ vegan Daring Bakers would have come up with.
I have to thank Meeta and Tony for expanding my baking repertoire with this challenge; after all, I am a Choux Pastry maker now! Do step across to my fellow Daring Bakers blogs to see some very creatively presented Eclairs and keep watching for what we’re going to be baking next month. See you all then.