As it
gets colder, my butter and carb intake gets bigger. It's a direct and
unfortunate relationship, and very hard when you're trying to save money for a
food fest trip to HK and media-ville lends itself well to Christmas lunches and
drink in the next few months. It's got so bad, the little paunch has got a
name. As I write this, I've just stuffed a cupcake down me, and so my guilt and
sugar high drives me to carry on typing in vain. Sunday blues with an icy wind
just mean more baking and more slow cooking. So as the short ribs slowly braise
in the cooker, I decided to make a little choux classic. My idiotic plan to
make these mini just meant I ate more of the suckers - a perfect 2 bites of
sugar, cream and chocolate. The matcha powder is a simple mellow hum to the
very sweet white choc (I used Green and Blacks) and a really good pop of colour
to lure you in. Fancy sugar work on the top is completely unnecessary, but a
good way to waste time if you're impatiently waiting for the pastry to cool and
the chocolate to set. Eclairs are one last blast of summer - they're lighty and
pretty to eat - so go make a batch now. I was testing out some recipes for a
moustache Movember bake sale I'm doing at work and thought these would be an
ingenious way to get some 'tache-clairs. Follow me on Twitter to see if I can
actually pull these off!
The ones
below can also be made as profiteroles. Now if only it were able to be so
versatile as to include it as one of my five a day.
Ingredients
(adapted from Rachel Allen's: Bake!)
90 grams
of plain flour
10 grams
of dessicated coconut (optional - add back 10grams of flour if you want to)
150ml of
water
Pinch of
salt
75 grams
of butter
3 eggs,
beaten
120
grams of white chocolate (Green and blacks is great for this)
2 tbs
matcha powder
300ml
double cream
2 tbs
icing sugar
1 tsp
vanilla essence
Preheat
your oven to 200 degrees.
In a
medium heat pan, melt the butter in the 150ml of water until the butter has
melted. Allow the mixture to just about come to a little boil and then immediately
take off the heat.
Add the
flour, coconut and salt and beat vigorously until the mixture comes together.
Place back on the heat for a minute and a half, mixing occasionally. Then
spread the mixture onto a plate to let it cool slightly for a few minutes.
The
mixture then goes back in the pan (but off the heat) and pour in the beaten
egg. Pour a few spoonfuls in at first and keep beating with a wooden spoon. You
want to continually add the eggs until it looks glossy and is of dropping
consistency (that means if you pick a lump of the mixture up with the
spoon, it'll drop within a few seconds without needing a jolt...if it's
not able to do that, add more egg) Depending on the size of your eggs, you may
not need to use all of it up - so do add in gradually.
Pour
mixture into a piping bag (or a sandwich bag with a corner cut off like I do)
and on a baking tray with non-stick parchment paper, pipe out 8cm x 2cm eclairs
onto the tray with enough space for each to expand. Brush gently any unbeaten
egg you may have over the top, but not totally necessary if you don't have any.
Pop into
the oven for 12 minutes, and after that, lower down to 190 degrees and heat for
a further 8-10 minutes, or until they are golden and crispy.
Take the
eclairs out the oven, and with a toothpick/skewer, make a small hole on each
end for the steam to come out and then pop back into the oven for 5 minutes for
them to dry out. Once out the oven, place on a wire rack to cool.
Whilst
that is cooling, place the chocolate and matcha powder in a bowl over a pan of
boiling water and let it melt, stirring occasionally.
Whip the
cream up with the sugar and vanilla until its reached a good consistency to
pipe. Cut each eclair and pipe out (again with a sandwich bag if you need to)
or spread cream across each one.
With a
spoon, spread the melted chocolate over the top of the eclair and leave to set,
and you're good to go!
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