Swear by the Éclair

Making eclairs takes quite a bit of time because each step either requires or could use an opportunity to rest at the end. For example, once the eclairs are baked, they must cool before you can put the custard in them. The custard also has to set in the fridge after it is made. This is a great project to do either across multiple days or in short sessions throughout a Saturday or Sunday. With this in mind I think patience is a good virtue to have when you take on the challenge of the eclairs.

In the process of making the eclairs we practiced a wide variety of techniques. Some of the more unique and less common skills were tempering eggs in the custard and using the piping bag to pipe out lines of shoux pastry. Instead of adding all of your cold or room temperature eggs into your hot liquid, (which would net you weird clumpy scrambled eggs,) you add some of the hot liquid to the eggs while stirring to dilute and slowly raise the temperature of your eggs. This prevents them from clumping and cooking suddenly. Once about half of your hot liquid has been mixed into your eggs you can dump it back in with the other half. These eggs will help thicken, enrich and smooth out whatever it is that you are making. In this case of course, it was custard. The other unique practice was using the piping bag. While I have had a bit more practice in this area from icing cookies and forming macarons, it is still something that I have room to improve on. My hands get quite shaky which often makes the end product not as perfect as I would like it to be. I have made progress, but I hope that I can get even better.

I personally like trying new techniques and skills because it adds variety and a fresh feeling to time in the kitchen. Since we as humans need to eat, we have to spend a lot of time making our food and the process can get stale to me sometimes. It is really rewarding to try new/unconventional recipes and concepts like eclairs.