Another day, another post

I have today off from work and have done some house cleaning and such. Now I'm just relaxing because I don't feel like doing anything else.
So I figured while I sit around doing nothing I could at least be busy doing something... So Blogging it is...

In my last post I said I would take more pictures of my Totoro cream puffs.. Well that didn't happen. My DARLING husband just happened to eat the perfect ones that I was saving for my pictures so I just ate them and gave some to my friend at work instead... Sorry about that, but you know who to blame... I'll at least post the recipe!

Pate Choux!

Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate Éclairs
Recipe from Chocolate Desserts by Pierre Hermé

Choux Pastry
1/2 cup (125g) whole milk
1/2 cup (125g) water
1 stick (4 ounces; 115g) unsalted butter, cut into 8 pieces
1/4 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup (140g) all-purpose flour
5 large eggs, at room temperature

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees F. Line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper. Prepare a pastry bag with a medium sized plain tip.
In a medium sauce pan, bring the milk, water, butter, salt and sugar to a boil.
Add the flour all at once and lower to medium heat and stir vigorously until it's smooth and seems a little dry. About 2-3 minutes.(It kind of reminds me of over cooking cream of wheat or something........)

Transfer into a mixing bowl onto your mixer with a paddle attachment. Add one egg at a time making sure to blend completely before adding the next. The dough should be thick, shiny and silky looking, like a ribbon.

Put into your pastry bag and pipe Totoros. Basically start at the bottom and pipe a little larger than a quarter size round then slowly bring it up to make the head about a nickle size. Squeeze a little out for ears. Continue until all the dough is used up. You can also make regular eclairs or cream puffs by piping about a 4" line or a dollar coin size round. Leave about 2 inches between each.
If you have little pointy parts sticking up and out wet your finger a bit and just push or smooth it out, otherwise they will burn.

Bake for 25-30 minutes until brown and crisp.
Let cool completely.

Chocolate Pastry Cream.(YUMMMMM! I love pastry cream! *swoon*)

2 cups (500g) whole milk
4 large egg yolks
6 tbsp (75g) sugar
3 tablespoons cornstarch, sifted
7 oz (200g) bittersweet chocolate, melted
2 1/2 tbsp (1¼ oz: 40g) unsalted butter, at room temperature

In a medium sauce pan bring milk to a boil. In the mean time combine yolks, sugar and starch and whisk right away in a bowl.

Once the milk has reached a boil, temper the yolks by whisking a couple spoonfuls of the hot milk into the yolk mixture. Tempering the eggs raises the temperature of the eggs slowly so that they do not scramble.
Continue whisking and slowly pour the rest of the milk into the tempered yolk mixture.
Strain the mixture back into the saucepan to remove any egg that may have scrambled. Place the pan over medium heat and whisk vigorously (without stop) until the mixture returns to a boil. Keep whisking vigorously for 1 to 2 more minutes (still over medium heat).Stir in the melted chocolate and then remove the pan from the heat.

Scrape the pastry cream into a small bowl and set it in an ice‐water bath to stop the cooking process. Make sure to continue stirring the mixture at this point so that it remains smooth.

Once the cream has reached a temperature of 140 F remove from the ice‐water bath and stir in the butter in three or four installments. Return the cream to the ice‐water bath to continue cooling, stirring occasionally, until it has completely cooled. The cream is now ready to use or store in the fridge. The pastry cream can be made 2 - 3 days in advance and stored in the refrigerator. In order to avoid a skin forming on the pastry cream, cover with plastic wrap pressed onto the cream.

Now that you have all the stuff prepared you can start decorating and filling the cream puffs!

I found it easier to slice the cream puffs right in half horizontally, then decorate the tops and then fill them.
So for Totoro you need some white chocolate and dark chocolate to make little faces.
Here's Totoro!

And again, here's what mine look like(not so great)

But you get the idea. You can dip some in chocolate first and then add the eyes if you want some extra chocolatey yumminess.
You can let the chocolate harden in the fridge for a few minutes and then fill a pastry bag with pastry cream and squeeze it on the bottom halves of the cream puffs and place the tops on.

DONE!
Enjoy!