Eclairs

An absolute mess. You could call them 'rustic', if you're being kind!

Éclairs! The first time I tried them, they were a bit of a disaster. I went into the kitchen and dug out the baking utensils, imagining crispy fresh choux pastry filled to bursting with rich, smooth vanilla crème, topped with a sinfully decadent glossy chocolate sauce, powdered with icing sugar. What I got was... not that. I was disappointed and temped to throw them away before anyone had the chance to witness my failure. However, guilt and an aversion to waste kept me from doing so. -Well, that, and my mother, who happened to see, and convinced me that they'd taste ok- and they did. They may not have been exactly what I'd been envisioning, (far from it) but they still tasted great! They looked ok too, which was far more than I was expecting.
Recently I tried them again, this time used Sorted's recipe for dark chocolate and ginger éclairs, which you can find here. However, to the crème patisserie I made minor changes. Sorted uses seven egg yolks in their ginger crème patisserie, which I was reluctant to do, simply because I knew the whites would just eventually be disposed of. Seven egg whites is a lot, and aside from making meringue based desserts etc., I couldn't recall many recipes that used egg whites- and I did not want to make macarons again. (Also, two egg whites makes plenty macarons, seven would make enough to feed an army!)
I also topped mine with a glossy ginger-chocolate sauce, rather than melted chocolate, because I prefer my sweet choux desserts to be topped with sauce, rather than chocolate that will set and harden.

Piping skills need work!

DARK CHOCOLATE GINGER ECLAIRS
So here we go; you can find the original recipe here.

GINGER CREME PATISSERIE RECIPE
To be completely honest, you can barely call it a recipe, its more of a simple variation. The recipe belongs very much to SortedFood. All I did was use whole eggs rather than separated, and use custard powder rather than corn flour for that lovely rich colour. You can use corn flour if you don't have custard powder.
INGREDIENTS
500ml Whole milk
1tsp Vanilla extract
1 Piece fresh ginger grated
75g Caster sugar
25g Plain flour
4tsp Custard powder
3 Whole eggs

The method I used is exactly the same, simply use the three whole eggs instead of the seven egg yolks, and substitute the corn flour with custard powder if you have it.

CHOCOLATE SAUCE
100g Dark chocolate
25g Butter
1tbsp Golden syrup
2tbsp Stem ginger syrup

METHOD

1. Place all the ingredients in a pot and heat gently, stirring, until melted. Pour into an icing bag, snip off the end, and drizzle onto the éclairs.
2. Top the éclairs with chopped stem ginger pieces.