Eclairs - shells

 

Eclairs.  Today let's about shells.  Here's what's needed:  butter, a tiny bit of sugar and salt, water, flour, and eggs.  That all.

Heat the water with butter salt and sugar until the butter is melted.  I never let it boil as I don't want to lose any of the volume of water.

Add in the flour all at once and stir with a wooden spoon.  This type of spoon is the easiest of all the utentils to use for making eclair dough, in my opinion.  Once the flour and liquid is combine, still in the pot on the heat, you start stirring more vigorously.  This should be maintained for a few minutes.  The dough will come together and soon you will see a thin film being left on the bottom of the pan.  Now you know it's done.

Toss the dough into a mixer and mix for a minute or so to allow some steam to vacate the dough, and to cool it just a bit.  Then add whisked eggs and mix until they are thoroughly combined.  Finally, turn up the speed on the mixer to medium and run it for about 30 seconds.  Now you have a beautiful dough.

Spoon the dough into a pastry bag.  I'm using a relatively small tip here as I want smaller eclairs with this batch.  But you can do a variety of sizes and shapes of eclair shells.

Make whatever shapes you want, doing this directly onto parchment already placed on a baking sheet.

Into the oven they go at a high 400 degrees.  You want a burst of heat to hit these to make them cook faster initially.  However after a short while, the heat is turned down and the shells are baked for longer time at the cooler temperature.  This stops the expansion of the shells and allows for nice browning on top with a fully cooked interior.

And there you go.  These are relatively small versions of eclair shells.  They can be made bigger and thicker, small and round, whatever you wish.  Once cooled, these are ready to be cut open and filled.

Next up is topping, which will be extremely easy.   A new post on that will come shortly.

Enjoy the fall weather everyone.  It is amazing out there today!