Éclair (Choux Pastry with Cream Filling)

Variations

• Choux à la crème (cream puff): the same paste piped in rounds rather than lengths. A sphere has more volume for its surface area, so it rises a little more readily — the easier place to start.
• Profiteroles: small choux filled with ice cream under warm chocolate sauce.
• Paris-Brest: piped as a ring and filled with praline cream. It is named after a bicycle race, which is why the shape is a wheel.
• A lighter filling: fold about a third of whipped cream into the pastry cream and you have crème diplomate — lighter, and easier to pipe.
• The glaze: chocolate is standard, but coffee fondant (éclair au café) is just as common in France. Half of each is the default patisserie display. Vanilla fondant scattered with chopped pecans is another common pairing — it is what the photograph on this page shows — and the quantities for it are in the ingredient list.
• Two ways to fill one: piping through holes in the base is the patisserie method; the other is to split the shell horizontally, pipe cream into the bottom and put the lid back on (which is what the photograph shows). Splitting it shows the cream off, but far more of the shell is in contact with it, so it softens sooner.
• How it differs from churros: the paste is made almost identically — flour cooked in boiling liquid, then eggs. Everything after that diverges. Churros are fried into a crisp-shelled stick; an éclair is baked, and the steam pushes the inside out to leave a hollow shell. The same paste makes two entirely different objects.
• Against croissant and brioche: those are raised by yeast over hours; this is raised by steam in fifteen minutes. That is roughly how French pastry divides (fermentation basics).
• The same cream as prinsesstårta: crème pâtissière is identical in both, including the rule about boiling it a minute past thickening.

Tips

• Do not open the oven. Most failures are this. Choux sets in the shape steam pushed it into, and cold air arriving before the shell is firm cools the steam, shrinks the volume and drops it. A collapsed choux never comes back.
• Cook the flour for two more minutes in the pan. This is what makes choux paste unusual — pre-cooking gelatinises the starch so it binds far more water, which in turn lets the paste absorb much more egg. That egg is the protein that sets the shell in the oven.
• Egg is a consistency, not a count. How much you need depends on egg size and how much water evaporated earlier. The mark is paste that hangs from the spoon in an inverted triangle and breaks after three or four seconds; when it gets there, stop adding (cooking eggs).
• Cool the paste below 60°C before the egg goes in. Hotter and the egg scrambles into grains that never smooth out again.
• Melt the butter fully before it boils. If lumps are still melting when it reaches the boil, water has been evaporating in the meantime, the paste comes out stiff and takes less egg.
• Flatten the piped peaks. A wet fingertip is enough. Left alone they scorch first, and the burnt point is where the surface splits.
• Pierce them the moment they leave the oven. A baked choux is still full of steam, and left sealed that steam condenses and softens the shell from the inside. Three holes in the base is plenty.
• Fill them completely cold. Cream in a warm shell melts and runs, and softens the pastry (serving temperature).
• Beat the cream smooth before piping. Chilled crème pâtissière is a set gel and will break up in the bag; work it with a spatula until it flows (thickening).
• Eat them the same day. From the moment they are filled, water migrates out of the cream into the shell. Within hours the crispness is gone and by the next day it is a different pastry. Baking the shells ahead and filling to order is what patisseries do.