The Great British Bake Off Week 7 - Chocolate Eclairs

You can feel that the show is nearing the end now, with only a few weeks left of the competition and all the bakers being a really good standard... it's so hard to choose a winner! However it was Kate's turn for the chop this week, leaving 5 bakers in next week's quarter final. So it was only right that I had a go at the choux pastry show-stopper of chocolate eclairs.

I've taken the recipe from The Great British Bake Off How To Bake recipe book (which I would recommend any budding baker to buy as it has lots of traditional and simple bakes to try).

Ingredients

• 100g plain flour
• ¼ teaspoon salt
• 75g butter
• 3 free range eggs
• 300ml double cream
• 2 tablespoons icing sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 100g dark chocolate 

Start by putting the salt and butter into a saucepan with 175ml of water and heat (but don't boil) until the butter has melted. Then bring to the boil before turning off the heat and sifting all of the flour into the pan. Mix quickly until it's all combined into a soft dough. Heat on the hob again for another couple of minutes, just to cook it slightly. The recipe said that this will help the dough easily come away from the sides of the pan but mine had already done this so I chose to only heat mine for a minute. Now tip the dough into a large bowl and leave to cool. I would recommend starting to preheat your oven to 200°C at this point.

Break the eggs into a bowl and whisk slightly to break them up. Then, once your dough is cool, mix them in gradually using an electric whisk. If your dough is becoming too liquid, like mine did, stop adding the egg otherwise your pastry will collapse during baking. Now pipe the choux pastry to your desired length and thickness onto a greased and lined baking tray using a piping bag. Remember to leave space between each eclair as they will grow during baking.

Put your eclairs into the oven and bake for 15 minutes, then reduce the temperature to 180°C and open the oven door to let the steam out. Bake for another 15 minutes, after which time your pastry should be golden and crispy and ready to take out of the oven (but don't turn it off as you'll be using it again in a minute). Please note that if you've chosen to make mini eclairs, they will not need to be baked for as long so I would recommend keeping a close eye on them. (You could maybe try the 'bake off squat' to peer into the oven!)

Whilst being careful not to burn yourself on the hot pastry, pierce a hole into the end of each eclair with a sharp knife. This is to let the steam out to help bake inside the eclairs. Now put them back into the oven for another 5 minutes. I was a bit nervous about baking them anymore as they were already quite crispy so I ended up taking them out of the oven after about 3 minutes. Once out of the oven, leave to cool before filling.

To make the cream filling, whisk together 250ml of the cream, the icing sugar and vanilla extract using an electric whisk until it is stiff enough to hold peaks (or it looks like it won't ooze out of the side of your eclairs). Now cut each eclair open down the side and fill with a good helping of cream. It should be enough to fill the inside but not too much to be able to close the eclair. 

Now for the topping, break the chocolate into squares and put them into a small glass bowl along with the rest of the cream. Heat over a pan of water until the chocolate has melted. Then turn off the heat and continue to stir until the chocolate and cream is thoroughly combined to make a thick topping. It was much runnier than I expected so I left it to cool a bit in the hope that it would thicken, which it didn't. In the end I had to carefully pour the chocolate on top of each eclair, making sure that none dribbled down the sides. Then I put them all into the fridge so that the topping could set. All that was left then was to eat them, and with my family they didn't hang around for long!