Real Chocolate Eclair Cupcakes are made with wonderfully melt in your mouth choux dough, and pastry cream and topped with delicious chocolate.
So I decided I wanted E to be Éclairs, because I love French Food, and I’ve been dying to figure out a way to make a Chocolate Éclair cupcake that does not have graham crackers or whipped cream in the recipe. That is not French and that is not a real Éclair.
An éclair is a pastry made with choux dough filled with a cream (crème patisserie) and topped with a ganache. Thus, I knew I needed to perfect the perfect choux dough to begin with. It wasn’t too hard to come up with a really good batch.
It took two tries. The first batch was wonderful flavor wise, but the texture was slightly denser than I wanted.
After the choux dough was perfected, I came up with how to pipe the custard in.
I decided the best way was to utilize any holes that formed naturally in the baking process, and any that didn’t, I would insert the nozzle through the top of the cupcake which would eventually be covered in chocolate ganache.
Then I needed to actually come up with the pastry cream recipe (crème patisserie).
I have now piped these things with pistachio custard, vanilla custard and vanilla and coffee pastry creams.
Each one is delicious, so you can choose if you want to find something different.
I share the recipe for the vanilla pastry cream (crème patisserie) here, but definitely feel free to change it up.
Then I needed to top it off with a delicious ganache, and I needed it to be slightly thicker in texture than a more standard glaze so it will hold nicely.
And thus, the Eclair cupcake was born.
They were absolutely amazing, I loved them – the kids loved them, my husband loved them. The different flavors change them up so you can enjoy them any way you want. Perfection in a cupcake.
More Cupcake Recipes
Recipe for REAL Chocolate Eclair Cupcakes!
REAL Chocolate Eclair Cupcakes!
Ingredients
For the Choux Dough:
- ½ cups water
- 2 Tablespoons unsalted butter
- ½ cups all purpose flour
- 2 medium eggs
- 1 ½ teaspoons vanilla extract
For the Pastry Cream (crème patisserie):
- 1 ¼ cups milk
- 3 egg yolks
- ¼ cups granulated sugar
- 2 ½ tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 ½ tablespoons cornstarch
- 1 teaspoons vanilla extract this is where you can play with the flavor a little if you’d like
For the Chocolate Ganache
- 6 ounces semi-sweet chocolate finely chopped
- ¾ cups heavy cream
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 400°F; prepare your cupcake pan – you can either use baking cups or spray the pan with cooking spray. I chose not to use baking cups because I wanted to see everything and I wanted to be able to utilize the natural holes that occur in baking to fill the pastry with the cream.
- In a saucepan on medium heat, heat the water until boiling. Drop the butter in and allow to boil until the butter is melted. Add the flour, stirring constantly until the mixture is smooth. Continue cooking over low heat, until you have a nice dough and you notice its leaving the sides of the pan easily.
- Immediately remove from the stove and put into your stand mixer (or a large bowl with an electric mixer). Allow the mixture to cool a bit (5-10 minutes) before adding the two eggs, one at a time, beating in between each addition. Add the vanilla in and mix well.
- Using a large kitchen spoon, drop the mixture into the muffin pan. This dough has enough to make 12 cupcakes, try to keep the amount even across the board.
- Bake for 15-20 minutes or until they are puffed and a beautiful golden color.
- Remove from oven and immediately, BUT CAREFULLY, remove them to a wire rack to cool. As they are cooling, begin working on the pastry cream.
- In a pan on the stove over low heat, warm the milk until it begins to steam. While it’s heating, take another bowl and whisk the egg yolks, sugar, flour and cornstarch until it is very smooth. Once the milk is steaming, add the vanilla extract in and stir. Now add the egg/flour mixture a little at a time, mixing well, stirring constantly. Allow the custard to continue cooking for 1-2 minutes never stop stirring. It’s done when the custard is very thick. It will seem very loose at first, but keep stirring and heating and I promise you’ll wind up with a thick custard like cream at the end.
- Remove from the heat, pour into your bowl and refrigerate for about a half hour to allow it to cool.
- When it is finally cool, use a pastry bag to pipe the cream into the center of each cupcake using any natural holes that developed in the pastry while cooking, otherwise insert nozzle in the top and push down and fill that way.
- Place the cream in a saucepan and allow to scald. Turn the heat down and stir in half the chocolate. Stir constantly, once that’s melted add the rest and continue stirring until the chocolate is smooth and melted.
- Remove from heat and pour into a bowl. Allow the chocolate to cool to room temperature before glazing the top of the cupcakes, otherwise you will have quite the liquidy mess on your hands.
Oh my!! How heavenly do these look! I wish I could bake!! LOL! Are they hard to make?
They were surprisingly easy to make Tammi. They are a process, but they are easy if you follow the steps. I remember joking with my daughter when my choux dough came out of the oven in perfect little “muffin/cupcake” puffs that wow – that was easy, the oven did the hard work.
So glad I’ve found you early in the alphabet.. Can’t wait to see what else you’re making. Great E!
Lynne
Twitter: @LynneinPborough
I’m glad you found me early in the alphabet and also thankful that you are doing the challenge too. I will check in on you, can’t wait to see what you’re doing.
Oh, yes! These look SO tasty. It’s highly unlikely that I’ll be making these any time soon, but I’ll sure be thinking about them!
Ah you should try them. One won’t hurt you. A dozen might 😉
Thank you!
Brilliant! I’ve also always wanted a recipe for eclairs that doesn’t just rely on whipped cream. Now to get cracking!
That was very important to me too Louisa. I kept seeing all of those running around and thought… nope. That’s not a real eclair. Thanks for the comment!
Those looks amazing and oh so yummy! I have a weakness for eclairs.
Eclairs are amazing, I know. I have a thing for French food, period. lol I’m glad you stopped by!
Tried these out today…and i did something wrong. The cream and the icing came out wonderfully but the dough just….didn’t work. Going to try again though, since I have all the toppings!
Can the be frozen?
Hi there. I am really not sure if these can be frozen, as I’ve never done that. I would worry a little about the consistency of the cream in the middle and the dough becoming soggy as they thawed. If you decide to try it and freeze them, please let me know how they did. Maybe try freezing one or two first and see how they fair?