Great Bloggers Bake Off Patisserie Week

Well its come to patisserie week and I haven’t managed to join in as much as I would have liked. I love choux pastry so I knew I was all in this week. I would have liked to have made the tower of éclairs but there was no way I’d manage it.

I have been lucky enough to be contacted by Tesco again, with an offer to support my bake with a voucher towards the items I need for patisserie week.

I was going to make two different fillings for my éclairs, this has allowed me to go a bit further with the flavour choices I could make.

I would like to present my éclairs with chocolate and caramel plus vanilla mascapone cream.

Basic Choux Pastry (makes 12)

65g plain flour, sifted onto a piece of greaseproof paper
50g unsalted butter
Pinch salt
120ml water
2 eggs, beaten

• Grease baking trays with butter and preheat the oven to 190C fan/Gas 6
• In a pan put the water salt and butter and melt over a low heat until melted
• Bring to the boil, then add the flour in one go and mix off the heat
• Put back on the heat and beat with a spoon until the mixture forms a smooth ball
• Put in a bowl and leave to cool
• When cooled, beat in the egg a little at a time until the mixture drops off the spoon when shaken slightly
• Put mix into a piping bag with a round nozzle. Pipe a 10cm/4in line onto the baking sheet
• Bake for 15 minutes then turn the oven down (don’t open the door!) to 150C/Gas 3 and bake for a further 10 minutes
• Make a hole in the side of pastry and place bake in the oven for about 3 minutes to crisp up
• When cooked leave to cool and fill with your choice of filling

I’ve used these two

Chocolate Creme Patissiere

300ml milk
3 egg yolks
50g caster sugar
10g plain flour
10g cornflour
50g chocolate
Vanilla

• Heat the milk, add the chocolate and melt
• Mix the egg yolks and the other ingredients except the vanilla into a paste
• Pour the milk/chocolate onto the egg mix and stir quickly (or you will have chocolate scrambled eggs!)
• Return this mix back to the pan and bring to the boil
• Cook for 2 minutes over a low heat and add the vanilla
• Cover the creme patissiere with cling film on the surface so it doesn’t develop a skin and leave to cool

To these ones when I filled the choux pastry I added a spoonful of Carnation caramel (it made it a bit sickly so I won’t be doing that again!)

Vanilla Mascapone Cream

150ml double cream
3tbsp icing sugar
125g mascapone
Vanilla extract

• Whisk the cream with the icing sugar to soft peaks
• Beat in the mascapone and vanilla

Fill the éclairs well – no one wants a mouth full of empty choux pastry.

Melt some chocolate and dip the tops of the éclairs in and leave to set.

They don’t keep for long so eat them quickly!

The Bloggers Bake Off can be found here

And I would like to say thank you to Tesco for their help but all views here and the recipe is my own. For more ideas please look here at Tesco’s recipes.