Barbara’s been a friend for a long time and she offered me a blogger link to her book but that wasn’t good enough for me. After a quick browse through the freebie, I knew I wanted my own copy of her book and why not, for now it’s only $9.99 and boom it was on my Kindle tablet app straight from Amazon.
I gathered all the ingredients and read the recipe through before I began. How many of you will admit to getting a recipe, looking through the ingredients and start cooking? I am guilty of this but I’m getting better and good thing too because the recipe calls for 4 eggs but only 3 go in the choux pastry.
Choux pastry is the easiest dough to make and people who say they are afraid of making cream puffs, gougeres, profiteroles or eclairs just haven’t tried it or they followed a bad recipe. I put my eclairs into the oven less in than 15 minutes and that included time for the butter to melt and for the mixture to cool for 5 minutes.
First I piped with the star tip and they looked stupid so I scooped them back into the bag and went with just the plain bag and piped about 4 inches, then ran them over with the tines of a fork. Into the oven at 220C/425F for 5 minutes and then lower to 190C/375F for 30 minutes. It’s seriously easy.
I left the éclair pastries in a warm oven because we live along the ocean and it’s Spring. If I didn’t, they’d be flat in an hour. Éclairs and cream puffs don’t like humid days.
Then it was on to the filling and it’s just two egg yolks, some brown sugar, salt and light corn syrup and once it’s been in the pot for 8 minutes, add a pile of chopped pecans and some vanilla.
One thing I did that wasn’t in the recipe was to toast the pecans before chopping them up. Just a few minutes at 180C/350F makes a world of difference. It could also be that pecans down here in Australia are different.
Putting the éclairs together was simple. I spooned in the filling and piped whipped cream on top and plopped on the top. John’s favorite dessert is an éclair so he was standing by when the last photo was taken.
It tastes like you remember pecan pie tastes and it’s light like an éclair. The best of both worlds. If you’re looking for an outstanding dessert perfect for the season, get the book. It’s under $10 and this is just one of so many terrific recipes like the Christmas croquembouche, Paris Brest, swan cream puffs and what about root beer float profiteroles?
There are 152 pages in Dream Puffs, written by a food blogger we all love. I didn’t get permission from the publisher to post the recipe but the book is worth buying just to make this recipe!