Mini Chocolate Eclairs

Last week I decided to try making choux pastry for the first time ever. This is a must if you ever want to make profiteroles or chocolate eclairs. For the adventurous, Croquembouche is a tower of choux buns.

I have to say, that making the choux pastry itself was pretty easy. I wasn't entirely sure how big they should be when piping them onto the tray, but I think that they came out the right sort of size.

I was in a pretty foul mood whilst making these, it was the first time in a long while that I had tried baking at my parents place (where I am currently living). I spent ages trying to locate all the right equipment to discover that the electronic scales had run out of batteries, and that the measuring jug had gone missing. I then managed to pull out the very expensive Equilibrium scales that my brother had bought me some years ago only to then discover that I couldn't work out how to use them. It's a traditional type of scales with some lovely weights but it just didn't seem to be balancing correctly, no matter how hard I tried. Luckily I had a cheap backup pair of scales that didn't need batteries.
The measuring jug was found in the garden - my parents had used it for mixing cement. This is the sort of thing that happens in my house. My parents, particularly my dad has no clue about kitchen equipment despite being an amazing chinese chef. Baking is just not his area of expertise. I have this nice flan tin with a removable base that is now missing it's base because I suspect my dad threw it away. This tin is obviously now useless :( Anyway, I couldn't use this measuring jug and had to resort to using these measuring cups to approximate. *sigh*

I struggled a bit with the piping as I didn't have the correct nozzle so I made fewer eclairs than I had wanted. I think I ended up with about 10 or 11. When they were done in the oven, I took them out and placed them on a wire rack on the kitchen island and turned my back for about 2 minutes to pour some cream into a bowl. My parents were playing mahjong on the opposite side of the kitchen and I suddenly heard this voice pipe out 'These are a bit tasteless'.. 2 minutes! I looked round to discover that my mum had already eaten a plain choux eclair. *sigh*

Anyway, here is how they turned out in the end:



I have promised my old colleagues that I would make more and bring them in for a sample. I will be doubling the amounts this time!