(no subject)

[which_chick]

Eclairs may only be cooked on the middle shelf of the oven. Further, you cannot fuck around opening the oven and swapping trays around mid-baking because that will make the eclairs deflate and you will not be able to repuff them. It is rather difficult to fill unpuffed eclairs. Eclairs must bake one tray at a time, middle shelf only. The fact that the choux pastry recipe makes enough choux pastry for one and a half trays of eclairs is one of life's little disappointments.



This knowledge comes, as you might reasonably expect, from having tried to do two trays of eclairs at one time. FAIL.

You also don't come out even with pastry cream and eclairs unless you make the wee tiny 2.5" eclairs. If you try to make bigger eclairs, you will not have enough pastry cream to fill them unless you make another batch. If you only have eight eggs to start with, you're going to have some unfilled eclairs. Since choux pastry is made up of water, flour, butter, and eggs (no sugar), eclair shells are rather bland and lifeless without pastry cream inside them.

The reason that ganache splits into weird oily stuff and weird chocolate solids is a lack of heat combined with an excess of stirring when making or reheating it. If you catch it going grainy early, like before it's gone totally tits up, you can increase the heat slightly, let it warm up a bit (without stirring) and then whisk the hell out of it to get a useable product with much improved texture. However, it is far better and way less stressful to use sufficient heat at the outset so that the sauce never starts to go bad.

Learning at the school of hard knocks, here. (One of the reasons that I do fiddly stuff more than one time is so that I learn all the ways it can go wrong. It is not enough to have made eclairs once so that they worked. Anyone can do it once. Once is chance. Fiddly recipes need more practice of technique than once.

Comments

[d-ubervillain.livejournal.com]

I have a very funny image in my head of you giving mouth to mouth to the eclairs, in a futile attempt to repuff them...

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

That's even funnier when you put the thirteen year old sensibility on it and consider the shape of the things. It'd be a blow job indeed.

[toanstation.livejournal.com]

I learned the hard way that the eggs need to be room temperature. They don't really puff with cold eggs.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I hadn't noticed this for choux pastry, though I know it makes a huge difference in beaten egg whites (for meringues and stuff). I'll have to give room-temperature eggs a whirl the next time I do eclairs.

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

You have yet to make me eclairs, BTW....

And while this comment is directed at toanstation, I will accept eclairs from which_chick, too.

[which-chick.livejournal.com]

I will make you eclairs. However, I will not take eclairs to your house. You have to come get them. Given the effort involved in getting eclairs from me, perhaps it'd be less trouble to convince toanstation to make 'em for you.

The truly low-effort option may be to make eclairs for your own self. They're honestly not that difficult.

[alycewilson.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. How far do you live again? ^_^ Depending on how good the eclairs are, I might be up for a road trip.

Seriously, though, I haven't baked anything for a while. I usually wait until there's some sort of an event planned, so that I can share the goodies with others. Maybe toanstation will be willing to try some eclairs with me. If we do try them, I'll post something.