With so many French franken-desserts dominating the foodscape in the past decade — think cronuts and cruffins — the eclair has often been eclipsed by the ‘it’ dessert of the moment. And unfairly so!

With its deliciously soft, creamy centre and decadent chocolate icing, the classic eclair eschews all the superficial trendiness. But while other food trends have come and gone (I’m looking at you, cronut), the eclair is still going strong.

To boot, the eclair had its own modern make-over in the 2010s, thanks to Christophe Adam of L’Eclair de Genie. The famed pastry chef made eclairs trendy again with his crazy, modern iterations — at his patisserie you could find contemporary, unusual flavours, such as yuzu, orange, caramel popcorn etc and, apparently, Adam came up with over a hundred different recipes/interpretations of this classic dessert. Of course, if you have a hankering for the traditional, there is still the good, old chocolate eclair.

We owe the eclair, too, to another famous French baker. According to food historians, the dessert was invented by renowned pastry chef Antonin Carême (who is believed to have also created another French classic dessert, mille-feuille) in the early 1800s in Lyon. The pâtissier was patronised by the elite of his time, such as Napoleon, Britain’s King George IV and Tsar Alexander I of Russia.

Two hundred years later and the popularity of Carême’s creation has still not waned — the eclair, it seems, is here to stay.

There’s something simple yet so charming about this classic French pastry…

Chocolate Eclairs

While crazy flavour combinations are best left to pastry chefs, there is no reason one can’t whip up the classic version at home. The eclair isn’t as complicated as it appears — the most time-consuming step, making the choux pastry, can be done up to three days ahead of time. Plus, once you’ve mastered the basics, there is no reason not to experiment with different cream fillings (chocolate, mango, strawberry) and ganache toppings. After all, the world is your eclair.

Eclairs (Makes 16 eclairs)

Ingredients

½ cup or 8 tablespoons unsalted butter½ cup milk½ cup water¼ teaspoon salt2 teaspoons sugar1 cup all-purpose/white flour4 eggs1 egg and 1 tablespoon milk for the egg wash

For the Cream Filling

4 egg yolks 3 tablespoons cornstarch 1 cup milk1 cup cream½ cup sugar 1 tablespoon unsalted butter 1 tablespoon vanilla essence ¼ teaspoon salt

For the chocolate ganache

½ cup cream 2/3 cup bittersweet chocolate or 1/3 cup milk and 1/3 cup dark chocolate

For the white drizzle

¼ cup cream4 tablespoons milk½ teaspoon sugar

Method

1. Make the cream filling. Beat the eggs together. Then add the cornstarch and continue whisking until a thick mixture forms. If the starch isn’t dissolving completely, add a few tablespoons of milk and stir well.

2. In a separate saucepan, add the milk, vanilla essence and sugar, and heat the mixture, stirring well until the sugar dissolves. Bring the mixture to a boil. Add very little of the milk to the egg mixture at a time and whisk quickly — if you add too much of the hot milk mixture at once, the eggs will scramble. Pour the mixture back into the saucepan through a sieve (to remove any egg solids that may have formed) and then heat it, while whisking it constantly. Continue cooking the mixture until a thick custard forms. Add the cream and whisk for a minute. Remove from heat. Whisk in the butter and salt. Stir well. Set aside to cool for three hours in the fridge.

3. Make the choux pastry — combine all the ingredients, except for the eggs and flour, in a saucepan. Stir well. Put the saucepan on the stove and continue stirring the mixture on medium heat, until the butter has melted and a thicker mixture has formed. Once the mixture starts to simmer, add the flour and continue stirring until a dough-like mixture forms. Mash the dough against the saucepan’s sides and bottom for a minute or so to cook the flour. Remove from heat and set aside to cool.

4. Whisk and beat four eggs. Add a little at a time to the cooled choux pastry mixture. Stir the mixture after each addition. Keep on mixing until the curdled-looking mixture forms a smooth texture. Set aside in a bowl, cover with cling wrap or a lid and put it in the fridge until it needs to be used.

5. Make the eclairs. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Pour the choux pastry mix into a piping bag with a large nozzle. Line a baking tray with waxing paper and then pipe out three to four-inch-long eclair shells. Make an egg wash — whisk one egg with one tablespoon of milk. Brush the egg wash on the piped-out eclairs.

6. Bake for 20 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. Lower the oven temperature to 180 degrees Celsius and bake for a further 10 minutes or until brown.

7. Make the chocolate ganache. In a saucepan, heat the cream until it slightly simmers. In a bowl, add broken/cut pieces of chocolate. Add the heated cream slowly to the chocolate, stirring lightly until the chocolate melts. Stir until the chocolate and cream have mixed well. Set aside to cool.

8. Fill the baked eclair shells with cream. Add the chilled cream filling to a piping bag with a small, round or star-shaped nozzle. Prick a hole at one end of the eclair shells with a toothpick. Insert the nozzle into the pricked hole and squeeze in the cream. Repeat for all shells.

9. Dip the filled eclair shells in the chocolate ganache and set aside for 5 minutes or so for the chocolate to set. Whisk the cream, milk and sugar together and drizzle over the ganache in a zigzag pattern. Place in the fridge for half an hour to an hour to cool. Serve chilled with chai or coffee.

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 1st, 2024