Chocolate Heaven

This month's Daring Baker's Challenge was a chocolate symphony in my mouth. Hosted by Tony Tahhan and MeetaK (Google them!), the recipe of choice was Chocolate Éclairs by Pierre Hermé.

I was supposed to post on August 31 (which was yesterday), but I was unable to get a steady enough connection until nearly 5pm on September 1. Sorry fellow Daring Bakers! I guess that's the consequence of peace and quiet out in the country.

No, on to the éclairs. First of all, it has never ever occurred to me to even attempt to make an éclair. It always seemed like one of those things one should save for France or, at the very least, a professional. However, I took it on (despite being very pregnant) and had a very successful outcome.



See? The pastry part was actually very simple, even though the directions at first seemed very difficult. They weren't that much different than a traditional cream puff, which I've made dozens of times.

I splurged a little and got some supa-fine dark chocolate to use for this recipe. Chocolate cream with sub-par chocolate just wouldn't be right. And the filling turned out very very rich, but very very worth it.



I did, however, run out of chocolate for the glazing on top. Luckily I had some plain ol' Hershey bars laying around. I took a risk mixing the delicious dark chocolate with regular milk chocolate, but it actually added a nice milky sweetness to the overall end product that made it just melt in your mouth. Plus, I had a bit of glaze left over that will be perfect on some ice cream sometime in the near future.



The Other (who claims not to like chocolate) ate about half of these already. I made them on Saturday and, although not as good two days later, they are still delicious after being popped in the microwave for about 20 seconds. If you'd like the recipe I can give it to you!

Update on the rag rug for baby's room: it's not as spectacular as I anticipated. I'm not really sure what it's turning into, but it certainly isn't a rug. Once completed, I'll post.

As always, thanks for reading!