Eclair 'Notdogs'

This is not a hotdog.

In fact, it's not even savoury. Or hot. Are you confused?

This is my 200th blog post, so it only seemed right to pull out something crazy & fun for the occasion. These are eclairs, made with a chocolate pastry cream for the 'sausage', raspberry sauce for the 'ketchup' and lemon icing for the 'mustard'. And they taste really, really good.

I know I must sound like a total nutjob right now, but I kind of love these. It was an idea that I've had for a long time, making choux pastry and filling it with chocolate pastry cream to make it look like a hotdog. The only problem was, I had never made choux pastry. In fact, I didn't really like choux pastry. Is that a terrible, shocking thing to say? I've just had so many badly made profiteroles that are hard and tasteless at birthday parties, it had totally put me off choux pastry. When did people give up on the humble birthday cake?? But then I had a really wonderful, freshly made one at Blancharu, and I knew I had to try making it for myself. After watching all the crazy drama of the croquembouche making on Masterchef, I was expecting it to be scary and guaranteed to fail.

But then I started making my pastry cream. And it came out smooth, and silky and rich. It was divine, and it chilled to the perfect texture. And then I prepared my very first choux paste, and it went quickly, smoothly and just like the pictures in my Le Cordon Bleu cooking book. Then I piped my mixture out and stuck it in the oven and like magic, they puffed up! Even my little practice profiterole came out like a perfect, little hollow sphere. Yep, it was magical.

But then I sliced open my cooled eclair pastries, and proceeded to pipe my little chocolate 'sausages'. And then I realised they looks a little bit like dog turds. Shoot. It was mostly the fact that they were sausage like and very shiny. I tried to solve the dog turdness by sprinkling some cinnamon over the top of the sausages, which I think was quite cool since it sort of gave them a kind of charred look. And the squiggles of the raspberry sauce (which was a little runny so it bled into the pastry unfortunately) and the lemon icing seemed to reduce the poo effect. But some people still made dog poo comments.

The part that surprised me the most about these is that they tasted so much better than I expected. The pastry was light and crisp, the pastry cream was smooth and creamy and the sauces on top provided a gentle acidity and a little extra texture. And to me, they were pretty close to looking like hot dogs. There's something so satisfying about creating something that looks nearly exactly like you pictured it in your crazy brain. And it was surprisingly easy. On the matter of choux pastry, I think I might be converted. They were so fun to make! Don't be scared off by the long method and all the different ingredients, if you are organised and do the pastry cream the night before, then it will all come together easily.

Eclair 'Notdogs'
(adapted from Le Cordon Bleu 'Complete Cooking Step-by-Step')
Yield: About 16 mini dessert hotdogs

For the choux paste:
125g butter
1/4 tsp salt
150g plain flour
4 medium eggs

For the pastry cream:
335ml milk
3 medium egg yolks
15g cornflour
100g caster sugar
75g dark chocolate

For the 'condiments':
Ground cinnamon
Raspberry jam OR 100g frozen raspberries + 1 tbsp sugar
75g unsalted butter
75g icing sugar
2 tsp lemon juice
yellow food colouring

Prepare the pastry cream; bring milk to the boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Meanwhile, whisk egg yolks with caster sugar in a large bowl until smooth. Whisk in cornflour until combined. Gradually whisk hot milk into yolk mixture in bowl. Melt chocolate in a heatproof bowl over a double boiler or in the microwave.

Return mixture to pan, cook over high heat, whisking constantly until the mixture thickens and boils. Do not take your eye off it or it will turn into scrambled eggs. Reduce heat to low and cook, whisking for 2 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in melted chocolate and then pour pastry cream into a shallow dish. Press cling film onto surface to keep skin from forming as it cools. Refrigerate pastry cream for at least 2 hours hours or overnight.

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C and line two baking sheets with baking paper. Heat butter, salt and 225 ml water in a 3 litre saucepan over medium heat until the butter melts and the mixture boils. Remove from heat. Using wooden spoon, vigorously stir in flour all at once until mixture forms ball and leaves side of pan.

Cool slightly. Add eggs to flour mixture, once at a time, beating well after each addition, until mixture is smooth and satiny.

Spoon paste into a large pastry bag fitted with a 1cm round nozzle (or use another zip loc bag). Pipe paste into strips about 8cm long 2cm wide, 2-3cm apart, onto baking sheet.

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden. Transfer eclairs to wire rack to cool.

If using the raspberries, gently heat raspberries and sugar in a small saucepan on low heat, mushing them up with a fork until they cook down into a thick syrup. Strain out seeds and then cool. Beat butter and sifted icing sugar using an electric mixer in a small mixing bowl. Add lemon juice and enough yellow food colouring so that it looks like American mustard. Place both the raspberry sauce and the lemon icing in two separate squeeze bottles or piping bags with narrow tips.

With your cooled eclair pastries, use a serrated knife to slice horizontally through the top middle of each eclair. Cut halfway and leave the bottom half still attached.

Pipe your pastry cream using piping bag a 1cm round tip (or a zip lock bag with a hole cut out of one of the bottom corners, this will save you a lot of washing up), along the middle of the eclair where you made your cut. Try to make it look as much like a sausage as you can, using your fingers to gently pinch the edges so they are slightly rounded and peek out each end of the eclair. Dust the surface of the piped pastry cream with ground cinnamon.

Pipe the raspberry sauce in a squiggle over the top of the pastry cream to represent the ketcup, followed by a squiggle of the lemon icing to represent the mustard.

Serve immediately. Can be stored in the refrigerator for a couple of days, but is best eaten on the day it was baked.

So as I mentioned before, this is my 200th post on this blog. It's taken a little longer to rack up my second 100, but I've had even more fun doing it and I hope it continues that way for the however many hundred posts that there may be in the future. I do this because it's a fun hobby and an escape from the drab routine of fulltime work, I don't think I would keep it up if it felt like a chore or a job. It's exciting to challenge myself to be a better baker. Plus it's a good excuse to go out and eat tasty food with my friends :) So thanks for reading, and for all your lovely comments, you know I appreciate them so much!