I first had a cream puff cake, sometimes called an eclair cake, at my friend Tom’s house. It was his mother’s recipe, and I loved it. My version of cream puff eclair cake is all from scratch: homemade choux pastry, a cream cheese-enriched vanilla custard filling, and stabilized whipped cream.
Use ganache to decorate it for any holiday, or just drizzle it on. Whether you use your pate a choux to make an eclair cake or classic eclairs, the procedure is exactly the same.
And if you are a super fan of custard like I am, you owe it to yourself to try my creme brulee cheesecake. For ease of browsing, here are all my custard and pudding recipes.
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Cream Puff Cake, At a Glance
✅Skill Level: Intermediate
✅Skills: Making Pate a Choux, vanilla custard, and chocolate ganache
✅Type: Layered Custard Dessert
✅Number of Ingredients: 6 for the pate a choux, 7 for the custard, 4 for the whipped cream, and 2 for the ganache
✅Prep Time: 35 minutes
✅Cook Time: 50 minutes
✅Yield: 16 servings
Jump Straight to the Recipe
The Inspiration
An eclair is a classic French pastry that traditionally has 3 components:
- pate a choux (or choux paste) that is baked up into crispy, hollow tubes or cream puffs
- rich vanilla pastry cream as the filling
- chocolate glaze on top
You would think that a “chocolate eclair” has chocolate filling, but nope. Folks call them chocolate eclairs because of the chocolate glaze on top.
Here is a smaller, 8″ x 8″ version I made that would work any time of year. I’ll put the smaller recipe amounts in the NOTES section of the recipe card.
Two Types
In the United States, there seem to be two main types of eclair cakes or eclair desserts. The first, which is the most like a traditional eclair and is usually called a cream puff cake, is made with:
- Pate a choux (cream puff dough or choux paste)
- boxed vanilla pudding mixed with cream cheese
- Cool Whip
- store-bought or homemade chocolate sauce or ganache
The other type, which bears less resemblance to an eclair but is still tasty and good for a crowd has these components:
- Graham crackers layered with
- boxed vanilla pudding and topped with
- chocolate frosting, glaze or ganache
Scratch Made Is Always Best
For my money, I want the first version, made with the choux pastry, but if I’m going to make the choux from scratch, I may as well go all in and make all the components.
What Makes This Recipe So Great?
Everything in this eclair dessert is made from scratch, so you’re getting eclair cake with homemade pudding and real whipped cream. Yup, eclair cake without Cool Whip. It can be done! Plus homemade ganache. Huzzah!
You can pick and choose here, of course. If you don’t have a ton of time, go ahead and use boxed pudding and cream cheese. It will still be really delicious.
Here’s the approximate amount of time it will take you to make everything so you can decide what you can make from scratch and what you want to use a shortcut for.
- Making pate a choux (on the stove and in the mixer): about 20 minutes. NOTE: If making a 1/2 recipe (amounts in the NOTES section of the recipe card), you can stir it up by hand)
- Baking the pate a choux: about 30 minutes at 400F. It needs to cool down completely, so allow at least 1-1 1/2 hours for cooling
- Making pastry cream: about 20 minutes. This needs to chill completely, so allow at least 3 hours in the fridge
- Making Whipped Cream: 2 minutes. Certainly no more than 5 minutes. Seriously.
- Making Ganache: about 1-2 minutes if you use the microwave. If not, maybe 3-5 minutes to bring your cream to a boil on the stove
Before we get to the recipe, we’re going in-depth on how to make choux pastry and pastry cream so your cream puff cake–that maybe you’re making completely from scratch for the first time ever–will come out perfectly!
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Ingredients and Substitutions
For the Pate a Choux
- water: Use all water or a mix of water and milk. The boiling water is what helps gelatinize the starches in the flour. It also provides a good amount of the steam that puffs it in the oven.
- butter: Adds richness, fat to carry flavor, and tenderizes the choux, keeping it from being unpleasantly crunchy.
- salt: Brings the flavor into focus
- sugar: Just a touch adds a gentle sweetness and assists in browning
- flour: Provides the structure for the choux paste. All-purpose is fine here
- eggs: Provide structure in the form of proteins to “set” the choux in the oven so it doesn’t collapse. Provides a mellow flavor and a pale yellow color as well.
Jenni Says: Pate a choux has an easy ratio: 2:1:1:2 water:flour:butter:eggs This is by weight, so if you have 2 oz water, you’ll use 1 oz flour, 1 oz butter, and 2 oz eggs. To make a large cream puff cake, you’ll use a 4x batch of this ratio, and for the smaller, 8″x8″ version, you’ll use a 2x batch
For the Vanilla Pudding/Custard
- egg yolks: Provides richness, some setting power, pale yellow color, emulsifiers, and that custardy flavor
- cornstarch: Provides the majority of the setting power so the pudding is sliceable.
- sugar: Adds sweetness and contributes to the texture. Regular granulated/caster sugar works well
- salt: Focuses the flavor
- whole milk: You can substitute any plant-based milk that you are able to boil. You can substitute 2% milk, but I don’t recommend using any milk with a fat content lower than 2%
- butter: If using cream cheese, leave the butter out. It’s there for a bit of richness and a subtle amount of thickening
- vanilla: Adds floral and woody notes and rounds out the flavor.
- cream cheese: Adds subtle tang and allows for a firmer texture so you can slice your pudding. If you don’t want to use cream cheese, increase the cornstarch by 1 Tablespoon per 2 cups of milk.
For the Whipped Cream and Ganache
- heavy cream: You can use regular whipping cream as well. I prefer heavy cream because I think it holds better for longer
- sugar: sweetens the cream
- instant clear jel: stabilizes the whipped cream by binding some of the water that would otherwise weep out over time. NOTE: this is an optional ingredient. If you do use Instant Clear Jel, do whisk it together with the sugar before adding to your cream. Otherwise, you could end up with little starchy lumps in your cream. No fun.
- salt: To round out and bring the flavor into focus
- vanilla: Adds floral and woody notes and rounds out flavor
- dark chocolate: Gives body and delicious deep, chocolate flavor to the ganache
Jenni Says: If you’d like, you can add a Tablespoon or so of corn syrup to your ganache to add extra shine.
Just looks at all the layers of goodness, one on top of the other!
Making the Base
The dough for eclair cake is exactly the same dough you’d make to make cream puffs, profiteroles, and/or eclairs. The only difference is that, rather than piping it in small mounds (profiteroles), larger mounds (cream puffs), or logs (eclairs), you just spread all the dough in a pan and bake in a hot oven.
Here’s how to make it. (You can also watch the video for this recipe that focuses solely on making the pate a choux).
First you make a cooked dough:
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- Place milk, butter, sugar, and salt in a heavy-bottomed saucepan. (You can also make cream puff dough with water. I use water if I’m going to make a savory filling. For sweet fillings, I use milk.)
- Heat over medium heat until the butter is mostly melted.
- Increase heat to high and bring to a boil, swirling the pan and/or stirring to make sure the butter is completely melted.
- Dump in the flour all at one time.
- Stir over medium heat until the flour absorbs all the liquid.
- Cook, stirring constantly, for 1-2 minutes to dry the dough out just a bit. It will pretty much look like mashed potatoes when you’re done.
In part 2 of pate a choux making, you beat eggs in, one at a time. You can use a wooden spoon to vigorously stir in each egg, but I like to use my
- You’ll need four eggs for this recipe.
- Crack one at a time into a cup and add them to your mixer. Beat thoroughly between each addition, making sure to scrape the bowl well. The first two eggs are harder to beat in than the third and fourth.
- After adding 3 eggs, you can see that the dough is still a bit dry. See how it’s all jagged looking where some dropped off the beater?
- After adding the 4th egg, the dough flows slowly like lava and sheets off the beater into a nice, shiny point.
The last step in making choux pastry for your lovely chocolate eclair cake is baking it.
- Scrape the batter out into a pan sprayed 9×13″ pan. You may also use a jelly roll pan if you’d like thinner choux and a thinner filling. Your call.
- Spread the dough out evenly, pushing it up around the edges of the pan a little bit.
- Bake at 400F for about 30-35 minutes until deeply golden brown and very puffy. The finished crust will be very uneven, but that’s not a problem.
- Poke small holes in the crust with a tip of a knife to allow steam to escape. Cool completely before filling with pastry cream.
Allow your crust to cool to room temperature, about 1-1 1/2 hours. Then you can make your pastry cream.
Making pastry cream is exactly like making vanilla pudding. It’s just a bit thicker and richer.
I kept the cream cheese from the original recipe. Since cream cheese is nice and solid at room temperature, it gives the pastry cream some body so it stands up to slicing.
How to Make the Pastry Cream with Cream Cheese
To make the pastry cream:
- Mix milk, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and salt in a medium sauce pan.
- Put the room temperature cream cheese and vanilla into a large bowl with a strainer over the top.
- Bring the mixture to a boil, stirring constantly with a long-handled spoon or whisk. Allow to boil, stirring and stirring, for 2 minutes. Otherwise the cornstarch will thin out and you’ll end up with soup. Not so good for slicing.
- Press the hot pastry cream through the strainer to catch any bits of egg that might have formed.
- Let sit for 2-3 minutes so the hot cream can help to melt the cream cheese.
- Whisk until completely smooth.
Jenni Says: If you don’t have or don’t want to use cream cheese in your custard, increase the cornstarch by 2 Tablespoons for the full recipe. I did this for the small version, and it worked like a charm.
Note how beautifully the custard with additional cornstarch sliced. Really lovely, and it’s also nice to know you can make this dessert without cream cheese.
Once you have the pastry cream made, all you need to do is pour it onto your crust, spread it out to the edges making sure there are no gaps between the sides of the pan and the pastry cream, and then press plastic wrap on the surface to chill in the fridge.
How Long Can I Refrigerate This Guy?
You’ll need to chill the pastry cream layer for a good 3 hours or so. Once you’ve added the whipped cream and ganache, the cake should be good to go in an additional 2 hours and up to a couple of days if you use Instant Clear Jel to stabilize your whipped cream.
You can refrigerate leftovers for up to 3 days, but it probably won’t last that long!
If you need an even easier, no-bake dessert option, try this Easy Strawberry Ice Cream Cake from Little House, Big Alaska.
Equipment Recommendations
Make the large cream puff cake in a 9″ x 13″ pan, or make a 1/2 recipe in an 8″ x 8″ square pan.
You don’t need a ton of specialized equipment, especially if you’re not piping decorations in ganache. I made everything for the small batch in a pan and a bowl with a whisk or silicone spatula.
I really do love my USA Pan 8″ square pan, so you may want to grab one of those. It’s a nice size for smaller batches.
I also like a small offset spatula for spreading out all the layers evenly.
I do love a small offset spatula for all sorts of jobs in the kitchen, but they really shine in spreading layers into a confined space like a pan with high sides. I have 3 small ones and a couple of larger ones. So useful!
Questions?
If you have any questions about this post or recipe, I am happy to help.
Simply leave a comment here and I will get back to you soon. I also invite you to ask question in my Facebook group, Fearless Kitchen Fun.
If your question is more pressing, please feel free to email me. I should be back in touch ASAP, as long as I’m not asleep.
A Note About Measurements
My recipes are almost all written by weight, including liquids, unless otherwise specified.
For accuracy and consistency of results, I encourage you to buy–and use–a kitchen scale.
I promise that baking and cleanup will be so much quicker and easier.
This is the scale that I recommend for home use. I have owned and used one for years.
Don't let its small price and small size fool you. The Escali Primo is an accurate and easy-to-use food scale that I have used for years. It's easy to store, easy to use, has a tare function, and easily switches between grams and ounces/pounds for accurate measurements.
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Cream Puff Cake Recipe
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Ingredients
For the Pate a Choux
- 8 oz whole milk, water, or a combination of both 1 cup
- 4 oz unsalted butter 1 stick cut into small pieces
- 1 Tablespoon sugar
- large pinch kosher salt
- 4 oz all-purpose flour 1 scant cup
- 4 eggs large
For the Pastry Cream
- 8 oz cream cheese 1 block at room temperature
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
- 32 oz whole milk 1 quart or 4 cups
- 8 oz sugar 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons
- 1.1 oz cornstarch 4 Tablespoons
- 4 egg yolks large
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
For the Whipped Cream
- 12 oz heavy whipping cream 1 1/2 cups
- 2 Tablespoons sugar whisked together with 1 1/2 teaspoons of instant clear jel optional
- tiny pinch of kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon vanilla extract
For the Ganache (SEE NOTES for a “looser” ganache)
- 6 oz semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chips 1 cup
- 3 oz half and half or heavy cream 1/3 cup plus 1 Tablespoon
Instructions
For the Pate a Choux
- Spray a 9×13" glass baking dish with pan spray. Set aside.
- Set a rack in the center of your oven and preheat to 400F.
- Put the milk, butter, sugar and salt in a medium saucepan.
- Heat over medium heat until the butter is mostly melted. Increase heat to medium-high, and bring to a boil.
- Dump the flour in all at one time. Stir vigorously with a heatproof spatula or a wooden spoon until the flour has absorbed all the liquid. Continue to cook for another minute or two, beating it constantly, to dry out the dough just a bit. It will look like mashed potatoes when you're done.
- Put the cooked dough in a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.
- Stir with a spoon or beat on medium low for a minute or two to help the dough cool down a bit.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping the bowl well before adding the next. Once all the eggs are in, the dough will flow slowly like lava and will come to a shiny point when it flows off the beater.
- Scrape the dough into the prepared pan, smoothing it out to the edges with an offset spatula. Build up the edges so they are a bit thicker.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes until deeply golden brown and very, very puffy and firm to the touch. It will look uneven. That's okay.
- Poke small holes in the baked crust with the point of a knife to let steam escape. Allow to cool completely, about 1-1 1/2 hours.
For the Pastry Cream
- Put the cream cheese and vanilla in a large bowl. Fit a strainer over the top, and set aside convenient to the stove.
- In a heavy bottomed saucepan, whisk together the milk, sugar, cornstarch, eggs, and salt.
- Heat the milk mixture over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture thickens and comes to a boil. Turn the heat down to medium and continue to cook and whisk constantly for 2 minutes to fully activate the cornstarch.
- Pour the custard through the strainer into the cream cheese and vanilla. Let sit for 2-3 minutes to help melt the cream cheese.
- Whisk until completely smooth.
For the Whipped Cream
- Once your pastry cream has chilled, put the whipped cream ingredients in a medium bowl (if using a hand mixer) or in the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the whip attachment.
- Whip until the cream reaches medium-firm peaks.
For the Ganache
- Put the cream and chocolate in a microwave-safe bowl or glass measure.
- Heat at full power for 1 minute.
- Stir well. If the ganache isn't completely smooth, heat at full power for 10 seconds at a time, stirring in between. Your ganache should be shiny and smooth in no more than 1 1/2 minutes, and most likely less.
To Assemble and Decorate
- Once the pate a choux has cooled completely, pour the hot pastry cream into the crust and spread out to the edges of the pan.
- Press plastic wrap on the surface of the pastry cream and refrigerate until cold, at least 3 hours.
- Spread the whipped cream in an even layer on top of the chilled pastry cream.
- Either drizzle on the ganache in a random design or put into a ziptop bag and snip off one small corner. Pipe whatever decorations you'd like.
- Chill the eclair cake another 2 hours before slicing and serving.
- Enjoy!
Did You Make Any Changes?
Notes
To Make an 8″x8″ square
Follow the procedures in the main recipe. Here are the ingredient amounts.For the Pate a Choux
- 4 oz water, milk or a combination
- 2 oz (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, cut into pieces
- 2 teaspoons sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 oz (about 1/2 cup) all-purpose flour
- 2 eggs (NOTE: I needed about an extra 1/3 egg to get it to the proper consistency. If the batter doesn’t flow off your spoon and end in a point, but rather looks all jaggedy or doesn’t really flow, beat an egg and add a little bit at a time until it behaves itself)
For the Custard
- 4 oz cream cheese, softened (if NOT using cream cheese, increase the cornstarch to 3 Tablespoons)
- 1 Tablespoon vanilla
- 16 oz/2 cups whole milk
- 3.5-4 oz granulated sugar
- 2 Tablespoons cornstarch (3 if not using cream cheese)
- 2 egg yolks
- heavy pinch of salt
- 1 oz butter (only if NOT using cream cheese)
For the Whipped Cream
- 8 oz heavy cream
- 1 teaspoon instant clear jel whisked together with 2-3 Tablespoons powdered or granulated sugar
- pinch of salt
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 oz finely chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips
- 4.5 oz heavy cream
- 1 Tablespoon corn syrup (optional, for shine)
Nutrition
Remember you can take a shortcut for any of the components, but if you have the time, you will really appreciate the truly homemade flavors in this eclair dessert.
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Question: On one step it says to cool the pastry cream and then another place it says to pour the hot pastry cream into the crust.
For the Whipped Cream: It says “once your pastry cream has chilled”.
To Assemble and Decorate: step 1 says “pour hot cream”.
What have you all done?
Thank you.
I can see how those directions are a bit confusing, and I will rework them to make them more clear. For you, here’s the rundown: I explain how to make each component and then the very last part of the instructions is assembly and decoration, so here’s what you’ll do: 1)make and bake the pate a choux. 2)Let cool completely. 3)Make the pastry cream and pour it–hot–onto the finished and cooled pate a choux crust. 4)Press plastic wrap onto the surface of the pastry cream and then chill until cold. 5)Whip the cream, spread on top of the chilled pastry cream, and 6)make the ganache and use it to decorate the cake. I hope that’s a bit more clear, Sheryl. Enjoy!
I love eclair cake! Looks so delicious!
Thanks, Natalie! I hope you give this a try–the pastry cream is especially wonderful!
OMG this eclair cake looks AMAZE-BALLS!!!! I could seriously dive right in and die a happy woman!