Mini Chocolate Eclairs

Ugggghhh. Sorry, that's not a very polite way to begin a conversation, but that's the way I feel right now.

I got it in my head this week that life would not be complete without mini chocolate eclairs. Do you ever get this feeling? Then I saw how many eggs were in my recipe, and my heart nearly stopped. It's probably a good thing that I haven't gotten my cholesterol checked in a while.

But I saw this huge carton of eggs at a local fruit store, and I decided that the heavens were trying to tell me to make eclairs. Isn't it nice when you get approval from above for baking projects?



I think that's pretty much where my divine inspiration ended. After you boil milk, butter, and sugar, you add flour, then eggs one at a time while "stirring engergetically."

Just not so energetically that you splash half your bowl of goo on the floor. Ack.

Then once I had baked the first batch I remembered that last time I made these things I learned how awful my oven is, how you can't use convection, and how easy it is to turn them into pancakes. Good thing this recipe makes a bunch.

So by the time I got to the cream filling.... well, I cheated and used instant pudding and whipped cream.

And a terrible thing happened. When filling these little suckers, they kept on exploding pudding cream all over me and I had no choice but to rescue shamelessly shove them in my mouth before they fell on the floor.

Hence the uggggh. I don't think I want to see another chocolate eclair for a while.

Here's the recipe, if you dare.

Mini Chocolate Eclairs
Makes approximately 40 miniature eclairs

Eclair Dough:

1 cup milk

1/3 cup water

100 g (1/2 cup) butter

2 teaspoons sugar

pinch salt

1 cup flour

5 eggs

Filling:

2 cups milk

1 package instant pudding

1 container whipped cream

Coating:

1/2 cup chocolate chips

2 T butter

2 T milk

Preheat oven to 425 F. In a pot, mix the milk, butter, sugar and salt. Heat over a medium flame until the butter melts. Remove from heat, add flour. Put pot back on flame, and mix with wooden spoon until the dough dries out a bit and stops sticking to the sides. Stopping to take pictures at this point will almost certainly ruin the dough. Take off flame. Add eggs, one at a time, while stirring energetically. Gaah. Fill pastry bag outfitted with large round opening and squeeze out small eclairs on baking sheet.

Bake 10 minutes at 425, then reduce to 375 and bake 10 minutes with THE DOOR OPEN. Do not use convection.

Make filling: add packet to milk, wait until it thickens. Add to whipped cream. Try to resist tasting it. Try it. I dare you.

To fill the eclairs: fit a pastry bag with a SMALL round tip. Jab it in the end of an eclair, squeeze out filling so that it fills up the air pocket in the eclair instead of shooting out all over you. If it does this, eat quickly to destroy all the evidence.

Melt chocolate and butter in a double boiler. Add milk and stir until combined. Gently spoon on top of eclairs.

If you're still reading this, you have quite a bit of patience. Congratulations. :)