eclairs!

I love eclairs. Year ago I made them completely from scratch and practically ate all of them by myself (hence the reason it's been years since I made them again). So when the ABC challenge was to make eclairs with chocolate pastry cream I was instantly excited. 

I've only ever made vanilla pastry cream, and as I read through the recipe I was secretly chiding myself for never making chocolate pastry cream before. I mean, I have a serious love for chocolate, so this should've been a no-brainer. 

I followed the recipe exactly, although I made my eclairs a bit smaller so I got 20 eclairs rather than just 12. The pate a choux dough recipe was different than what I'm used to, but it was fine. I don't think I'd use again though because it was a bit dry (although that could be because I made them small). 

Overall, the chocolate pastry cream was divine on it's own, but once the chocolate ganache was on top all the flavors became one, like a blur. Therefore, I still prefer a vanilla pastry cream over a chocolate pastry cream; I just love that combination of vanilla with dark chocolate.

I didn't really tweak any of the recipes because I wanted to try making it exactly as directed. Here are the links for the chocolate pastry cream and for the pate a choux dough (which will also make cream puffs!).

And as a side note, my husband and I took a minication up to Vermont and just happened to be staying near the King Arthur Flour store and bakery. I thought this was an appropriate picture since this year the ABC Challengers have been baking exclusively from King Arthur Flour.