Guys Love Cooking weekend recipe: Pistachio-cream chocolate Éclair
Chocolate, sugar, pastry, cream, pistachios... what's not to like? Guys Love Cooking take us to Paris, the inspiration for their fabulous Pistachio-cream chocolate Éclair, in this week's collaboration. An éclair is a pastry made with choux dough, packed with a cream filling, and topped with icing. The dough is the same as that used in profiteroles. Once cool, the pastry is then filled with a crème pâtissière, a flavoured custard, or with whipped cream and then iced. The name comes from the French éclair, translated as a "flash of lightning," so named because it is eaten quickly (in a flash). One of the reason why we like having guests around is that we can try out new recipes for our blog. That is exactly what we did last week when we had two friends over. It was the first time we gave this recipe a go. For this one we thought of a cafe we visited last Spring while in Paris that sold only coffee and eclair. It was like being in heaven. We're not sure about you, but we love eclair. They are soft, sweet, filled with cream; everything we like. French pastry are without a doubt the best in the world. Italians make great pastry, but the French are unmatched and unbeatable in our opinion.
Eclair can be filled with so many varieties of flavoured creams, from simple vanilla or whipped cream to a more audacious coffee, or pistachio like ours today. The icing is also open to thousands of variations. We chose a more traditional dark chocolate topping to counter balance the pistachio flavour. It tastes wonderful. Getting the shape right may take a couple of attempts, don’t give up!
Pistachio-cream chocolate Éclair
Prep Time: 2 hours Cook Time: 30 minutes Total Time: 2 hours, 30 minutes Yield: 12 Éclairs
Ingredients
For pistachio cream:
Pistachio: 1 cup Milk: 1 cup Egg yolk: 2 Sugar: 1/4 cup Corn starch: 1 tbsp Vanilla extract: 1 tsp Double cream (or substitute whipping cream): 200 g, stored cold
For pastry:
Water: 1 cup Butter: 1/2 cup Sugar: 1 tbsp Salt: 1/2 tsp Flour: 1 cup Egg: 4
For chocolate topping:
Dark chocolate: 150 g, chopped Double cream (or substitute whipping cream): 100 g Pistachio: 4 tbsp, roughly crushed
Method
Start by making the pistachio cream by blending the pistachios into a fine paste using an electric mixer or food processor. It should take about three to five minutes. Meanwhile, boil the milk. Whisk the egg yolks with sugar, corn starch and vanilla extract until combined. Very slowly pour the hot milk into the egg mixture while whisking it constantly. Alternately, pour a little milk at a time and whisk if it is not possible to do both simultaneously. Return the mixture into a sauce pan and cook in medium low heat while whisking continuously and quickly until the mixture becomes thick and smooth cream. Add the pistachio paste into the cream and whisk until combined, place in a refrigerator to cool down for at least an hour. Whisk the cream until fluffy and fold it into the chilled pistachio custard cream and set aside.
To make the pastry, pre-heat an oven to 200 C (400 F), and line a baking sheet with baking paper. Boil the water, butter, sugar and salt in a pan. Then add the flour via a sieve and stir using a spatula over medium-low heat until a thin film forms at the bottom of the pan after about two minutes. Take the pan off heat. Mix the hot mixture slowly using an electric or manual whisk until it cools a bit. Then add the eggs one by one and whisk until the batter is combined. Fill the batter in a pastry bag fitted with a two centimeter (0.75 inch) plain tip, and pipe ten-centimeter (four inch) lengths onto the baking sheet to make 12 shells.
Bake for about 20 minutes, or until golden brown. Then leave the shells in the oven for an extra 20 minutes to make them dry and crisp. Take them out and leave to cool completely. For the chocolate icing, cook the cream in low heat with the chopped chocolate, and mix until it becomes a smooth, thick sauce. Cut the shells in half length-wise, but do not slice all the way through. Dip the top in the chocolate sauce and sprinkle some pistachios on top, and set aside to chill in a refrigerator for 30 minutes. Finish it off by opening each pastry, and fill with the pistachio cream. Serve within eight hours.