Cappuccino Eclairs

When you bake a lot it can be easy to get stuck in a flavour rut. Chocolate, it probably goes without saying is a flavour I return to again and again. It is never a very long period of time that passes in between my chocolate bakes. I think every blogger or baker also has certain fruit they always have in their house and therefore bake with – for me it is probably lemons and apples. However, particularly when it comes to summer and there is lots of seasonal fresh fruit to use, I love expanding my repertoire and using new flavours. Whilst there are sadly still a few months until summer gets into its stride I have still recently been enjoying other opportunities to bake with underused flavours in my kitchen.Of course coffee isn’t an unknown or unused ingredient – it is estimated that in the UK we drink 70 million cups a day, pretty remarkable for a country with a population of 62 million! Nevertheless, it is definitely one I forget to use in baking, probably because it is such a standby I forget it can shine on its own. I was thrilled when Whittard sent me a package of this Brazilian roast coffee, giving me a chance to experiment. This was shortly followed by shock when I realised I’ve only done 5 coffee recipes on here in nearly 5 years of blogging and not one of my 300 To Bake recipes had coffee in! This time I really wanted the coffee to shine and be the star of the show, something which surprisingly I found quite difficult to do. So many recipes combined coffee with something else – normally chocolate, making mocha dishes, but I also saw it paired with flavours as diverse as lime or coconut. I must have seen hundreds of coffee cake recipes and whilst they are delicious I wanted to try something a bit different. Coffee éclairs were my first thought and after looking at lots of different things I couldn’t get these out of my mind. I really enjoy making choux pastry and making éclairs gave me a chance to practice my dreaded piping skills. As you can see from the photo, I ended up with quite a motley crew of shapes but they still all tasted good! I chose this recipe by Simon Rimmer from the TV show Something for the Weekend (now Sunday Brunch, which I love) because it has a double hit – the coffee whipped cream filling and coffee fudge icing. My only note about this recipe is that I managed about 15 eclairs instead of the 6-8 the recipe suggests and some of mine were already pretty big! I found the whole process strangely therapeutic and I was really pleased with the strong coffee flavour that came through in the end. Often éclairs can be very sweet with lots of chocolate or rich vanilla pastry cream so I think the bitterness of coffee really helps balance this. I am definitely looking forward to adding to my coffee recipe collection here in the future – I’ve seen a very tempting cappuccino pavlova by Nigella and espresso granita by Jacob Kennedy I’d like to try. Until then, enjoy the éclairs! :)

Profiteroles

Profiterole Story 1: At my parents wedding one of the puddings served up was profiteroles. However, as my Dad was busy greeting guests/celebrating/thinking about his speech/generally chatting away he never got one. All the guests were happily enjoying their “little bites of deliciousness”, filled with cream and covered in chocolate, but not one got to my Dad. And ever since then he has been making up for it by grabbing the profiterole chance whenever possible.Profiterole Story 2: I went on a week long cookery course a couple of years ago now, and one afternoon we made profiteroles. The lesson over-ran a little, and profiteroles tend to go soggy and flat when filled with their cream and left ahead of time. Therefore on the way home my friend and I were carrying three boxes: one of the delicate choux buns, one of lightly whipped cream and one of silky chocolate ganache – all waiting to be put together once safely home (aka safely near my Dad). Getting the tube home at the height of rush hour, standing in a packed London tube with wobbly boxes of rapidly melting cream, squashed between stressed office workers – quite an experience. Happily – the profiteroles were worth it. Yum.SO with these two profiterole memories with me I felt it was high time they were welcomed back to my kitchen. Choux pastry is a slight conundrum of pastry really – different to everything else. A light bun mixture made in a saucepan that puffs up to be fairly hollow and airy with a crisp outside, just waiting to be filled with all kinds of delicious things. I stuck with whipped cream, but for even more decadence these can be filled with pastry cream or ice cream. Of course choux pastry is not only made for profiteroles – it makes long eclairs, choux “swans”, choux rings, and savoury cheese gougeres. At big events and parties, profiteroles are traditionally served in beautiful towering stacks…but by the time I came to photograph these there simply weren’t that many left!
These profiteroles are good. Extremely good. Considering they are cream+chocolate+pastry it is no surprise they are very addictive. The pastry has to be done carefully and exactly right (this is the kind of recipe where baking becomes a real science) but is fairly simple when you get the idea and is so quick to put together. What are you waiting for? My recipe was from the classic Delia, which you can find here. You can also find all her tips on choux pastry here. Make. Eat. (Eat Another). Enjoy. Smile :)