It was around 8:00 last night and I was craving chocolate. We only had various types of chocolate chips, nothing special. Time to do something crazy, I thought. I had put off making chocolate eclairs for a couple weeks now. My daughter, Jessica, wanted to make them with me but having never made them before, I was a little intimidated, so I procrastinated. Last night I decided I would finally act.
We read through the recipe from Julia Child's book, Baking With Julia, a couple of times so we would be familiar with all the steps. We got out all the ingredients for the pastry and forged ahead. Now I realize that making these on the spur of the moment may not have been the best plan, but hey I'm a busy working mom.
Mistake #1: I forgot to bring the eggs to room temp.
Mistake #2: I added most of the eggs all at once. (I swear I read "add the eggs separately" but somehow in the heat of the moment I forgot.) It was turning into a comedy cooking show. Jessica stirred vigorously to mix my mess together. Finally it did form a dough. Maybe we had done it after all. Oops....
Mistake #3: Make sure all items are ready for use before starting the recipe! I had to quickly search for our pastry bags and tips before the batter cooled too much. I couldn't find what we needed so I slapped together a big plastic bag instead and cut off the corner.... well I cut a pretty large hole not thinking it would matter. Jessica did a great job piping the dough onto the cookie sheets and brushing them with egg wash. We cooked them and realized they were giant sized!
Mistake #4: I never seem to be content with a single recipe and therefore I try to combine multiple recipes. Sometimes this works.....other times not so well. We did not have 1 recipe for a filling. We wanted chocolate inside but how? SO I went to my favorite www.foodnetwork.com and quickly combined a couple different chocolate filling recipes.
Well in the end we were both covered in a big chocolate mess.... but ooooh was it delicious.
Kathy
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| Jessica using her big muscles to stir |
Mistake #1: I forgot to bring the eggs to room temp.
Mistake #2: I added most of the eggs all at once. (I swear I read "add the eggs separately" but somehow in the heat of the moment I forgot.) It was turning into a comedy cooking show. Jessica stirred vigorously to mix my mess together. Finally it did form a dough. Maybe we had done it after all. Oops....
 |
| Chocolatey Mess |
Mistake #4: I never seem to be content with a single recipe and therefore I try to combine multiple recipes. Sometimes this works.....other times not so well. We did not have 1 recipe for a filling. We wanted chocolate inside but how? SO I went to my favorite www.foodnetwork.com and quickly combined a couple different chocolate filling recipes.
Well in the end we were both covered in a big chocolate mess.... but ooooh was it delicious.
Kathy
 |
| Finished Product :) |
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