Chocolate Eclair Cake from Scratch

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The Inspiration

An eclair is a classic French pastry that traditionally has 3 components:

1. pate a choux (or choux paste) that is baked up into crispy, hollow tubes
2. rich vanilla pastry cream as the filling
3. 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.

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, 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.
• 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 how to make pastry cream so your eclair cake–that maybe you’re making completely from scratch for the first time ever–will come out perfectly!

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 at the top of the post.)

First you make a cooked dough:

1. 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.)
2. Heat over medium heat until the butter is mostly melted.
3. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil, swirling the pan and/or stirring to make sure the butter is completely melted.
4. Dump in the flour all at one time.
5. Stir over medium heat until the flour absorbs all the liquid.
6. 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 stand mixer. I can let the dough beat and cool down for a minute or two before adding my eggs, one at a time. Plus my arm doesn’t get tired. The dough will work either way, so don’t shy away if you don’t have a stand mixer. Just know your arm will get a workout!

1. You’ll need four eggs for this recipe.
2. 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.
3. 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?
4. 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.

1. 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.
2. Spread the dough out evenly, pushing it up around the edges of the pan a little bit.
3. 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.
4. 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:

1. Mix milk, sugar, eggs, cornstarch, and salt in a medium sauce pan.
2. Put the room temperature cream cheese and vanilla into a large bowl with a strainer over the top.
3. 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.
4. Press the hot pastry cream through the strainer to catch any bits of egg that might have formed.
5. Let sit for 2-3 minutes so the hot cream can help to melt the cream cheese.
6. Whisk until completely smooth.

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.

You can refrigerate leftovers for up to 3 days, but it probably won’t last that long!

Okay, let’s make this cake, shall we?

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.

Thanks so much for spending some time with me today. Enjoy your scratch-made eclair cake (and try not to save it all for yourself), and have a lovely day.

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