“Love bone”, “long John”, “coffee bar” or “hare’s foot” - these are the many fancy names for a French dessert, the name of which translates as “lightning”. Eclairs have many admirers in all corners of the world, and many housewives dream of learning how to cook them. It is for them below that we will talk about how to cook eclairs with different fillings and from different types of dough.

How to make classic custard eclairs

The classic version of eclairs is prepared with custard filling. When using just such a filling, it must be done the night before, so that the cream can cool and thicken well.

Proportions of ingredients for custard dough:

  • 240 ml of water or milk (you can use both in a proportion of 50 to 50%);
  • 100 g butter;
  • 150 g sifted wheat flour;
  • 3 g of salt;
  • 5 g of sugar;
  • 4 chicken eggs.

For a delicious custard with a delicate aroma of vanilla, you will need:

  • 400 ml of milk;
  • 2 yolks;
  • 100 g of sugar;
  • 30 g of flour;
  • 30 g of starch;
  • 5 ml of vanilla extract or vanillin;
  • 150 g butter.

Step by step cooking:

  1. As noted above, you need to start with a cream. Put milk on the fire and bring to a boil. Grind sugar, flour, yolks and starch into a homogeneous mixture, which is carefully introduced into hot milk.
  2. Add vanilla for flavor and brew until thick. Cool the cream to room temperature and put it in the refrigerator. The next day, beat the softened butter with a mixer, adding a custard base over a tablespoon.
  3. Put milk or water for the test on the fire. Put butter, salt and sugar into cubes into it.Bring the mixture to a boiling point, all components must completely dissolve.
  4. In one step, pour all the flour into a boiling liquid, quickly stir with a wooden spatula and brew, stirring constantly, until the dough is gathered in one lump.
  5. Remove the dough from heat, cool to 60-70 ° C and mix eggs one at a time. You should get a smooth and shiny dough flowing down with a wide ribbon from the shoulder blade.
  6. Put on a baking sheet covered with parchment from a pastry bag or through a bag of parchment stripes 10-12 cm long and 2 cm wide at a distance of 1-2 cm from each other.
  7. Bake workpieces at 220 degrees for about 20-25 minutes. Fill the cooled hollow tubes with cream through an incision from the side or a puncture using a pastry syringe.

For the dietary version of the cream, you can not add oil to it. To get a filling of a more delicate texture, the latter can be replaced with whipped cream, which are carefully mixed with a custard base with a silicone spatula.

Choux pastry for eclairs according to this recipe can be used for cakes and with other fillings. It also doesn’t matter which liquid to use for making flour (water or milk), since in any case the fresh taste of the hollow base is completely blocked by the taste of the filling.

With curd filling

Can the curd filling of French pastries claim the most popular, it's hard to say for sure. But it is indisputable that it turns pastries into not only tasty, but also healthy delicacies. After all, the benefits of cottage cheese are invaluable for both the adult and the children's body.

The composition of a gentle creamy curd cream includes:

  • 250 g of dry, tender cottage cheese;
  • 180 g butter;
  • 50 g of condensed milk;
  • 50 g of powdered sugar.

Cooking:

  1. Prepare the dough according to the previous recipe and sinter the buns of future cakes from it. While they cool, do cream.
  2. Push the cottage cheese through a metal sieve, then mix with condensed milk and beat everything with a blender into the most homogeneous mass without grains.
  3. Allow the butter to soften at room temperature, and then whisk it until white and splendor, along with the powdered sugar.
  4. In several stages, mix both masses with a spatula. The resulting cream fill the workpiece.

The taste of this filling can be varied a little by adding a handful of fruit jam or small slices of fruit. If there is no time or desire to mess with the preparation of curd cream, you can replace it with a ready-made cream cheese curd dessert.

Cooking with condensed milk

The easiest cream for eclairs is prepared on the basis of boiled condensed milk. The simplicity of its preparation and the delicious caramel-creamy taste make it a favorite among many sweet tooth.

To prepare such a filling, the following room temperature ingredients will be required:

  • 380 g of boiled condensed milk;
  • 200 g butter;
  • 30 ml of brandy;
  • 50 ml of ordinary condensed milk;
  • dough pieces under the base.

How to make a cream and fill it with eclairs:

  1. Put butter and boiled condensed milk in one container of creamy softness. Beat these products with a mixer. At the end, pour cognac and regular condensed milk into the cream.
  2. Transfer the finished filling into a pastry bag with a special nozzle for filling cakes and fill them with the base through two punctures on different sides of the tube.

If there is no special device, then fill the eclairs with cream using a spoon through an incision on the side. Also, cognac can be excluded from the list of ingredients, if the treat is prepared for a children's holiday.

How to make chocolate eclairs

A delicious eclair cake has even its own holiday. So, on June 22, the sweet tooth of the whole world celebrates Chocolate Eclair Day. True, this date is unofficial.

But it is not necessary to coincide with the baking of this delicacy to any number, but you just need to prepare for the test:

  • 250 ml of water;
  • 100 g butter;
  • 120 g of flour;
  • 30 g of cocoa powder;
  • 3 g of salt;
  • 4 eggs.

For filling with egg butter cream you will need:

  1. 250 g of soft butter;
  2. 160 g of powdered sugar;
  3. 3 eggs;
  4. 3-4 g of citric acid.

The sequence of actions:

  1. Chocolate dough for eclairs is prepared by analogy with the usual custard: water, salt and oil are heated to a boil, in one fell swoop, pour flour sifted from cocoa into the simmering liquid and brew. Then, after slight cooling, eggs are introduced alone.
  2. The resulting dough is precipitated in the form of tubes. In the absence of a pastry bag or syringe, you can spread the dough with two spoons soaked in water. Of course, the shape of the cakes will not correspond to the generally accepted one, but this will not affect the taste of delicacies. Bake chocolate blanks at 220-230 degrees until tender.
  3. For the filling, separate the eggs into yolks and squirrels. Beat the yolks with a mixer until a significant increase in volume and clarification of the mass. Beat whites with citric acid with clean, dry whisks until stable peaks.
  4. Soften the oil to a very mild state, but it should not become liquid. In a teaspoon, introduce it with sugar into proteins, continuing to whisk. Following these components, without turning off the mixer for a minute, pour in the yolks. The finished cream should spend 20-30 minutes in the cold before further use.

Chocolate lovers can make a chocolate filling, using chocolate ganache or any other chocolate cream for it. This will make the dessert mega-chocolate.

With butter cream

You can often see eclairs with butter cream in the store, but it’s better to refrain from buying such pastries, since no one can tell with accuracy which vegetable substitutes were used instead of butter. It is much more useful and tasty to cook such cakes at home.

For a delicious butter cream you need to take:

  • 350 g of condensed milk;
  • 200 g of butter.

Cooking sequence:

  1. Butter should be left in the kitchen on the table to make it very soft. Next, you need to beat it, starting from the minimum speed and gradually increasing the speed of the mixer corollas to maximum.
  2. During the whipping of oil, condensed milk should be introduced into it in a thin stream. Gradually, the mass will lighten and thicken. Before filling the basics of cakes (they can be baked chocolate or ordinary), the cream can be slightly cooled to make it more stable.

Sometimes it may happen that the cream stubbornly refuses to thicken, no matter how you whip. The reason for this may be too hot the temperature in the room, so the cream needs to be slightly cooled and whipped. If suddenly the mass is stratified, then a little warming up on a steam bath and repeated whipping will correct the situation.

With cream at home

Eclairs with whipped cream is a dessert that can be easily prepared in just a half to two hours, but these cakes will “fly away” from the plate even faster, because it will simply be impossible to tear yourself away from this weightless and delicate delicacy.

A simple list of ingredients for cream cream will be as follows:

  • 300 ml of fatty (over 30%) cream;
  • 100 g icing sugar or to taste.

Working process:

  1. Place the bowl for whipping cream and whisk the mixer for a while in the refrigerator so that they cool well. Cream must also be used from the refrigerator.
  2. After that, we begin to whip the cream at a low speed, gradually adding powdered sugar and increasing the speed of rotation of the beaters. You should get a lush and stable creamy mass.
  3. Carefully cut the tops of the hollow workpieces, put the cream into the cake with the help of the nozzle, cover the star, cover with the top and you can make another layer of cream on top in the form of a decor.

In cream cream, as in cottage cheese, you can add slices of fresh fruit. They will give freshness to the dessert. But the shelf life of the treat in this case will be reduced to a few days.

Traditional french eclairs

Eclairs from the French patisserie have plump but soft tubule walls so that the taste of the dough is good.Most often they are stuffed with delicate patisie cream and covered with chocolate fondant.

To repeat this culinary masterpiece at home for choux pastry (pate a choux) you need to take:

  • 200 ml of water;
  • 100 g butter;
  • 1.5 g of salt;
  • 1.5 g sugar;
  • 120 g of flour;
  • 180 g eggs.

For vanilla paste you will need:

  • 6 yolks;
  • 125 g of sugar;
  • 40 g of corn starch;
  • 500 ml of milk;
  • 5 ml of vanilla extract.

Baking Method:

  1. Cook the choux pastry according to the same principle as in the previous recipes. Set oblong workpieces out of it and send them to the oven preheated to 190 degrees.
  2. To get eclairs, as in a French patisserie, they should be baked by opening the door 1 cm for about 35 minutes. The blanks should become golden and light.
  3. Grind sugar with starch with yolks. The resulting mass is mixed with 100-150 ml of milk. Boil the remaining dairy product, pour the egg mixture into it, add the vanilla extract and brew the cream until thick.
  4. Cooled cream with a syringe through three punctures from above to enter inside the cake. Holes through which the filling gets into the eclair, hide under a layer of white chocolate glaze.

Chocolate icing can be quickly prepared by mixing a melted 100 gram chocolate bar with 15-20 ml of odorless refined vegetable oil. Such decor will not crumble and will have a beautiful glossy shine.

With protein cream

Compared to butter and custard, protein is less caloric, but tasty and light, so it is also often used for filling eclairs.

To fill one serving of cakes, you need to take:

  • 2 protein eggs;
  • 120 g of sugar.

How to cook eclairs with protein cream:

  1. To build a steam bath from two pots. When the water in the bottom boils, send proteins and sugar to the upper bowl.
  2. Beat the whites with sugar with a mixer in a water bath until the mass becomes shiny and thick so that traces of the whisk remain on the surface.
  3. Beat the cream a little more, removing it from the stove, and when it has completely cooled down, you can fill the prepared tubes from the custard dough.

Whatever recipe for dough or cream the hostess chooses for her eclairs, do not forget about the appearance of the products. Cakes can be decorated with chocolate, sugar, marmalade or any other icing that can be sprinkled with chopped nuts, candied fruit or pastry topping. But simply powdered with sugar eclairs eclairs will delight the eye.

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