Éclairs are one of my favourite patisserie.( my favourite are religieuses ) My parents would buy it for a special occasion on Sunday morning for the whole family to treat ourselves after lunch.

A few days ago  at a friend of mine  described the wonderful experience she had -while on a girl trip in Paris- after biting one of those. Try to picture Rémi from the famous animated movie Ratatouille having a blast while trying at the same time cheese and a grape. Got it ? That ´s the exact same feeling I myself have every time I go back in France.

Unfortunately, living in Norway I do not have the occasion to taste éclairs as regularly as I wish I had. That´s why returning from my girls ´s night I had this dream of succeeding the perfect éclairs.

The very next morning I opened my bible AKA my pastry book from Pascal. I just needed to decided which taste I wanted to use. This was finally settled when  I ended up on a French Canadian website praising the wonderful wild blueberries they had available.

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Pâte à choux / choux dough

60 pieces you will need:

• 125 grams of non-skimmed milk
• 125 grams of water
• 5 grams of salt
• 5 grams of sugar
• 90 grams of non-salted butter
• 100 grams of wheat flour
• 3 big eggs

How to proceed:

Heat up the water, milk, butter, salt and sugar. Take your saucepan out of fire, add the flour, and stir well. Put the saucepan back to the stove. Turn the heat to the maximum and stir for at least 1 minute. The dough will stick a bit to the saucepan but this is normal. Put your dough in the kitchen aid and add an egg every minute. Mix one last time and let is rest. Put your dough in the piping bag and make small heaps with 10 cm space between them. Set your oven to 200 degrees Celsius during 20 minutes.

Custard ( for filling) ” crème patissière”

Here is the basic recipe for crème patissière. Some have it with chocolate, vanilla, etc … For this recipe, I have used the fresh wild blueberries in whole. So that when you crunch in the éclairs you get a cream flavoured with blueberries and with whole berries in it.

ingredients

• 250 grams of milk
• 150 sugar
• 50 grams maizena
• 4 egg yolks

1. Whip the egg yolks and the sugar in a bowl.
2. Add a little bit of milk and the maizena
3. Boil the rest of the milk in a casserole and pour it over the egg mixture (this is at this moment that I added my berries, alternatively, I would put my vanilla pods, vanilla sugar a, or 70 % dark chocolate at this steps.)
4. Have the mixture in the bowl back in the casserole and cook it while mixing

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Icing (for éclairs)

Ingredients

• 75 grams of water
• 150 grams of sugar
• 150 of glucose
• 100 g of Viking Milk ( in Norway) – or cream
• 5 Gelatine plates
• Food colouring ( for my recipe I used purple) or 70 % dark chocolate ( 150 grams)

1. Boil the water, sugar and the glucose at 105 degree Celsius (or 2 minutes)
2. Add the cream and boil again
3. Add the soaked gelatine plate and the chocolate ( or the colour)
4. Mix well and cool down to lukewarm temperature before use.