Eclairs

Pastry Cream
Pate a Choux
1 cup chocolate chips
½ tsp. canola Oil

Prepare pastry cream and allow plenty of time for cream to cool (I usually make mine the day before), then prepare Pate a Choux to use as the pastry shells. In a double boiler melt chocolate chips and oil. If you have cake decorating tips, attach a large star tip to a disposible ziplock bag (so much easier to use and makes for an easy clean up). Fill ziplock bag with pastry cream and use star tip to puncture hole into the size of the pastry shell. Squeeze cream into center of shell until you feel a little resistance. Dip the tops of each éclair in chocolate icing and refrigerate until icing sets up (15-20 minutes). Refrigerate until ready to serve.

If cake decorating tips are not availble slice the eclair shells in half lengthwise through the center. Gently spoon the pastry cream into the bottom half of each shell. Place the eclair tops on a wire rack and spoon about 1 tablespoon of the warm icing across the top of each eclair. Carefully place the iced eclair tops on each of the filled bottoms and serve immediately or refrigerate until ready to serve.

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Who doesn’t like eclairs? If you have the pastry shells already in the freezer, then it’s easy to quickly make a batch of pastry cream and filling them is pretty fast. I prefer filling these with a cake decorator tip because you can pipe more filling in each one and they are so much easier to serve and eat (the cream is trapped inside and doesn’t spill out when you take your first bite). Enjoy!