Chocolate orange eclairs

My uncle came to visit last night so I decided to make some chocolate orange eclairs for dessert after a lovely steak dinner. They are seriously good and we ate the lot between us

For the choux pastry I used Raymond Blanc’s recipe on the BBC food website. I’ve included some images below of the various steps, the most important being getting the consistency of the pastry right – I didn’t need quite all of the egg in the recipe to get it to that point and if it’s too thin you can’t pipe it into shape.

Keep a really close eye on them during cooking, too. I tend to make them a little smaller than the recipe suggests (mostly because I can never stop at one and better to eat two small ones than two massive ones – completely psychological) and so they cook a little quicker.

Filling
Whipped double cream, about 150ml, flavoured with orange zest and icing sugar.

Glaze
A large bar of very high cocoa chocolate (I used co-op fairtrade 85%), about an ounce of unsalted butter, and a flat dessert spoon of caster sugar.

Melt everything together over a bain marie until the sugar has dissolved.

Construction
Once the choux fingers are cooled, use a piping bag with a metal nozzle to punch a hole in either end of each éclair and fill with the cream mixture.

Then dip the top side of each éclair into the warm chocolate and place on a rack to cool (keep them on a rack, not a plate, and don’t put them in the fridge – this will keep the pastry crisp).

EAT!