Eclair de Lune - simply music to my mouth

This month's Daring Baker challenge was just what I needed - something a little more low key, low maintenance, low cost, but BIG taste. This month's challenge was Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs hosted by MeetaK and Tony. I felt pretty comfortable going into this as I've made eclairs and cream puffs before (even recently for my April Fool's Dinner) but was still very excited about it because it wasn't something that would take me days to prepare and I knew that Neal would be very thrilled to eat them.

I had some great plans in my mind to do something truly daring, but in the end, I volunteered to make the desserts for a friend's baby shower and thought I had better play it safe and follow the recipe given. This recipe called for chocolate filling plus chocolate glaze and while that was very tempting, I opted out of doing the glaze and just stuck with the filling. Afterall, I was making 3 other desserts for this event and I was starting to feel like things were getting a little too rich.

I used my big ol' Wilton Dessert Decorator Pro, which I love because I could never quite master the bags and the pump was just easier in my opinion. I used the large star tip for the Pâte à Choux and the pastry cream and it was so easy. I sifted some powdered sugar on top and I was done! I really liked this puff pastry recipe (although it isn't very different from others but it tasted really good to me) and the cream was good enough to eat on it's own, like a warm chocolate pudding. Mmmm....

They were the only dessert that totally disappeared at the shower. In case you were wondering, I also made some Oatmeal Toffee Cookies, some Mousse au Chocolat Amer or Bitter Chocolate Mousse, and some Cinnamon Pecan Cheesecake Bars. I stayed away from fruity desserts as fruit was served at the shower.

I had actually doubled the recipe but made just one batch of pastry cream and it ended up going a long way. I had a handful of unfilled pastries left and so I saved them until this afternoon. I made up another batch of pastry cream and filled the leftover pastries and we served them to the Elder missionaries (Elder Price and Elder Charles), who are full-time missionaries for our church (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints), whom we had over for dinner this evening. I will say that they are not as good as when they are freshly baked so next time I will have to remember that. And yes, there definitely will be a next time.