These eclairs are popular every time! These eclairs are a favorite among my family, who frequently ask for them. Every time we have visitors, I generally cook them for dessert.
| Prep Time: | 30 mins |
| Cook Time: | 50 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 20 mins |
| Servings: | 9 |
| Yield: | 9 eclairs |
Ingredients
- 1 cup water
- ½ cup butter
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 4 large eggs
- 2 ½ cups cold milk
- 1 (5 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
- 1 cup heavy cream
- ¼ cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 2 (1 ounce) squares semisweet chocolate
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 tablespoons hot water
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F (230 degrees C). Grease a cookie sheet; set aside.
- Make choux pastry: Combine water and butter in a medium pot. Bring to a boil, stirring until butter melts completely. Reduce heat to low; add flour and salt. Stir vigorously until mixture leaves the sides of the pan and begins to form a stiff ball. Remove from heat.
- Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition until incorporated. Using a spoon or pastry bag fitted with a No. 10 or larger tip, spoon or pipe dough onto the prepared cookie sheet in 1 1/2×4-inch strips.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) and continue baking until the bottoms sound hollow when lightly tapped, about 20 more minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.
- Make filling: Combine milk and pudding mix in a medium bowl according to package directions. Beat heavy cream with an electric mixer in a separate medium bowl until soft peaks form. Beat in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Fold whipped cream into pudding.
- Cut tops off of cooled pastry shells with a sharp knife. Fill shells with pudding mixture and replace tops.
- Make icing: Melt chocolate and butter in a medium saucepan over low heat. Stir in confectioners’ sugar and vanilla. Stir in hot water, 1 tablespoon at a time, until icing is smooth and has reached desired consistency. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
- Drizzle chocolate icing over filled eclairs. Store in the refrigerator until serving.
- Instead of pudding, you can fill the eclairs with a combination of pastry cream or whipped cream. You can find lots of pastry cream recipes on this site.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 476 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 49 g |
| Cholesterol | 158 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 1 g |
| Protein | 8 g |
| Saturated Fat | 17 g |
| Sodium | 485 mg |
| Sugars | 35 g |
| Fat | 28 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
Came here looking for tips…. before I knew what I was doing I made the basic shells… while they were baking and cooling I made vanilla pudding (or another flavor sometimes) and iced them with thinned chocolate icing from a can ….. I was going for quick and easy and it worked….
I had a hard time making the pastries and they didn’t turn our looking right they were delicious though, and it was fun to try!
They took some time but they turned out really good! Definitely recommend using whipped cream instead but that’s just my opinion . Thank you!
Next time I’ll fold in less whipped cream because I like my eclairs with a little more custardy texture. But good!
Simple to follow recipe for a not so simple dessert :3 I think my 2nd attempt came out rather well! I think I’ll cool the frosting longer next time but otherwise, really great and most importantly, very tasty! 😀
This was great! I made the recipe as shown with only the difference of doing cream puffs instead of eclairs and it worked great. For the cream puffs I had it at the first temp for 3 minutes shorter than stated and 5 minutes shorter than stated for the second temp. The chocolate icing wasn’t my thing but the rest of it was great!
This recipe turned out great; light, tasty and pretty. The only advice I have is to halve the filling, there was way too much. Other than that, great recipe!
Came out great. Second recipe I tried and this one worked great. It was cold outside so I had to leave them cooling in the oven, if not they would have deflated.
This recipe had the best instructions, the temperature changes are critical. Everything came out great.
As a teen (many years ago!) I worked in a bakery run by a very strict Frenchwoman. This recipe is very close to what we made at Balagué’s in Los Angeles. If you make it in stages, (make Bavarian cream, then the shells, then assemble and frost) it’s quite easy. Very similar to the taste of the excellent eclairs we made!
I added the confectioners sugar to the whipped cream. I think it made the filling too sweet. I have made eclairs before with a very similar recipe but it did not add sugar to the whipped cream and it was amazing.
I made these for my son’s birthday. They turned out great and the best part was he wanted banana cream inside so I substituted banana pudding for the vanilla pudding. Perfect! I also froze the leftover cream and made ice cream!
I took the pudding and used heavy cream and milk together. whipped it and just kept adding cream to it till I got it to the consistency I liked
would highly suggest not mixing water and chocolate, use heavy cream instead and instead of adding conf. sugar directly I would disolve it in the cream or it will become clumpy. all in all its a good recipe
I made these eclairs and they were great, but of course dont forget the cup of convectioner sugar in the topping or they will be bitter and gross
The pâte à choux dough didn’t become hollow and the chocolate icing was okay. However, they looked completely normal.
Whipped up the eclair itself in an hour or two, simple to make the dough and worth the hassle of piping them full of creme. I recommend using boston creme instead of pudding, and removing them from the pan as soon as they come out of the oven; a few of mine stuck.
The pastry was a hit. We changed the filling to a richer vanilla custard, and used unsweetened chocolate for the icing to mute the sweetness. It was a hit!
Fantastic recipe. It came out better then the pastry shops.
I may have done something wrong, but I used a large enough pastry tip and my eclairs were still tiny. But they tasted great.
Eclairs and glaze recipes very good. I did not use the cream filling recipe, but it looks promising. 1-26-2020