Daring Bakers Go French!

Hello again, folks! It's time for another Daring Bakers Challenge! And this month, we go to Meeta (from the blog What's For Lunch Honey?) and her "Sugar Daddy" Pierre Herme and his chocolate eclairs.

I admit, when it comes to Daring Bakers Challenges, I always have a mini-panic attack when the recipes are announced at the beginning of the month. I mean, you just know the recipe is going to be about 4-5 pages long (sometimes longer), but still, I always have my super-wince ready.

This month's challenge was special to me, because I got to make my eclairs in my new kitchen!! I was so stoked when I saw that my new kitchen is about twice the size of my old one, with a gas range and stellar lighting (for taking those glamour shots of my food, of course).

I shouldn't have been afraid of this recipe at all, it was super easy. I took the advise of my fellow DBers and took the steps one at a time. I made the choux pastry dough the night before I assembled the eclairs, and they baked up like a dream. I warn you, if you do freeze your dough beforehand, allow them to bake about twice as long as the recipe calls for. If you want the recipe, go on down to Meeta's blog, I have it on my personal blogroll, as well as the Daring Bakers Blogroll.

Here's a nice shot of these babies just before they came out of the oven.
And after glazing, my little eclair sitting pretty, just waiting to be eaten up with a nice cup of tea.
I also made cream puffs. Those little devils! I can't stop eating them!! I like how in this pic, you can see the delish vanilla beans in the pastry cream. While we're on the topic of pastry cream, I pretty much wore about half the pastry cream when I was piping it into my eclairs. The darn tip on my frosting bag was so narrow, that instead of the pastry cream wanting to pipe into the eclairs, it decided to squirt itself back out the other side and onto my arm. Several times. I'm lucky I had enough leftover to finish the challenge!

If you haven't yet, you really should try this recipe out. You will NOT be disappointed! I'll be taking these darlings to work with me, because as my husband puts it, "Those are dangerous!" I am not to leave any in the house, they must all come with me to work, haha. Anyway, enjoy!

Cheers!
~Mehgan~