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Chocolate Eclairs are made with a traditional choux pastry, stuffed with homemade chocolate custard, and topped with a rich chocolate icing. They are perfect to make for any special occasion.
Eclairs take a little bit of time but none of the steps are terribly hard or complicated. The biggest challenge is that it involves three different recipes to make one dessert. It’s a process that takes some time but the end result is delicious.
If you are short on time and need a special dessert, you could make chocolate mousse or chocolate lava cake.
Table of Contents
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
- The process of making these treats can be a fun and rewarding experience, especially with family or friends in the kitchen.
- You can easily switch up the filling by adding different extracts or spices, such as cherry or cinnamon, to create unique variations of the classic eclair. You could also top them with a drizzle of caramel.
- Eclairs are a great choice for special occasions or when you want to impress guests. The glossy chocolate icing on top of these eclairs adds a touch of sophistication to the treat.
- Great for sharing. The recipe makes a generous number of pastries, so you can easily serve a crowd or save some for later.
Recipe Ingredients
- Water
- Butter: unsalted butter is best for this recipe
- All-purpose flour: don’t use bread flour or self-rising flour
- Eggs: you will need 7 eggs between the dough and the chocolate custard
- Dutch-process cocoa powder
- Sugar
- Salt
- Milk
- Vanilla
- Chocolate: use chocolate squares or chocolate chips
- Whipping cream: not heavy cream
See the recipe card below for full information on ingredients and quantities
How to Make Chocolate Stuffed Eclairs
- Step #1. Make the choux pastry dough, pipe onto a greased cookie sheet and bake until slightly golden brown.
- Step #2. While the pastries are baking, make the chocolate custard filling and then place it in the refrigerator to cool.
- Step #3. Slice each pastry lengthwise with a serrated knife but not all the way through and pipe or spoon the chocolate custard in the center.
- Step #4. Make the icing and then apply to the top of the eclairs. Serve right away or store in the refrigerator.
Recipe FAQs
Eclairs have an oblong shape, are filled with pastry cream and are topped with a chocolate icing. Cream puffs are round, filled with whipped cream, and dusted with confectioners’ sugar.
Choux pastry, or pâte à choux, is a light and airy dough made by combining water, butter, flour, and eggs. The secret to the perfect choux pastry is how you incorporate them.
No. But you can use a long metal tip on your piping bag (the one that’s used to fill doughnuts) to fill the eclairs from their bottoms rather than cutting them in half.
Yes. You could make the pastries and filling a day ahead and then fill them just shortly before you serve them. I recommend making the icing just before you stuff the eclairs or dusting them with powdered sugar.
Eclairs should be stored separately in the refrigerator for two to three days.
Expert Tips
- Make sure the flour and butter mixture rests for 5 minutes before adding the eggs. If you add the eggs while it’s too hot, they will start to cook and you’ll get little chunks of scrambled egg in your finished dough.
- To get those perfect, uniform eclair shapes, use a piping bag to pipe the dough onto your baking sheet. This will give you more control over the size and shape of your eclairs.
- Don’t open the oven door while baking. Eclairs need a hot, consistent temperature to rise properly and achieve that light, airy texture.
- When making the filling, it’s important to temper the eggs by adding small amounts of the hot milk mixture before incorporating them into the custard.
More Dessert Recipes to Consider
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Chocolate Stuffed Eclairs
Ingredients
Dough:
- 1 cup water
- 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 4 eggs
Filling:
- 6 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup dutch-process cocoa powder
- 3/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 3 cups milk
- 3 eggs, beaten
- 2 teaspoons vanilla
Icing
- 2 1-ounce squares chocolate (I used 1/2 c. chocolate chips)
- 2 cups sugar
- 1 cup whipping cream
Instructions
For the pastries:
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- In a medium to large sauce pan, heat the water and butter to boiling.
- Remove from the heat and the flour all at once, stir constantly until mixture is smooth and forms a ball.
- Let cool for 5 minutes.
- Beat in the eggs, 1 at a time, fully incorporating before adding the next.
- When the eggs are all mixed in, mix well until the mixture is no longer shiny (about 1 minute). Place the dough into a pastry bag.
- On a greased cookie sheet, pipe out dough in thick lines to form the eclairs.
- Bake for approximately 30 minutes or until light brown.
- Set aside to cool.
For the filling:
- While the pastries cook, make the filling. In a medium saucepan, prepare filling by whisking together the flour, cocoa powder, sugar and salt.
- Whisk in about 1 cup milk and cook over low heat, stirring often, until thickened, about 2 minutes.
- Add the rest of the milk.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs.
- Slowly add a ladle-full of the hot milk mixture to the bowl of eggs and stir to combine and then add the egg mixture back to the sauce pan on the heat, whisking as you pour it in.
- Continue to cook and add the vanilla.
- Set in the fridge to cool.
To assemble and make icing:
- With a serrated knife, slice pastry puffs lengthwise, but not all the way through.
- Pipe or spoon the custard mixture into the center.
- To make the icing, add the chocolate, cream, and sugar to a medium sauce pan.
- Cook over medium heat, stirring often. Bring to a simmer. Simmer for 5 minutes. Let cool and beat until smooth.
- Ice tops of the eclairs.
- Cool or serve right away.
- Store leftovers separately covered in the fridge.
Notes
- Letting the dough of water, butter and flour cool is crucial. If it’s too hot, the eggs will cook and you will have bits of scrambled eggs in the choux pastry.
- You can use a long metal tip (like the ones used for filling doughnuts) on a piping bag to fill each eclair from the bottom instead of splitting them open.
- The icing adds more chocolate flavor but you can skip it if you don’t want to make it or dust them with powdered sugar if you would like.
- If it’s your first time making eclairs, be sure to read the recipe thoroughly and gather everything you’re going to need before you begin and then take it one step at at time to ensure success.
Can we use Hershey’s unsweetened cocoa powder?
Yep, that will work great!