Coffee and White Chocolate Eclairs

My mum had me make these for her dinner party the other night. I made the recipe up myself, but used the Annabel Langbein choux pastry recipe as it holds it's shape quite well as it bakes.

Coffee éclairs 

Choux pastry

½ cup water

4 tbsp butter (60g), diced

3/4 cup plain flour, sifted

1 dessertspoon sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

2 large eggs

Preheat oven to 200C/400F fan bake.

Place the water and butter in a medium pot and heat to a rolling boil. Once the butter is fully melted, add the flour all at once and beat over the heat with a wooden spoon until the mixture leaves the sides of the saucepan and starts to crust a little on the base of the pan.

Remove from the heat and transfer the batter to a cake mixer or large mixing bowl. Add sugar and vanilla and beat for 20 seconds before beating in the eggs one at a time. The mixture should be thick enough to drop from the spoon in clumps, rather than falling freely.

Pipe lines of the batter into an eclair tray. Bake at 200Cfor 20 minutes or until the puffs looks golden and feels firm when tapped. Take out and slit the sides then leave to dry out.

Coffee filling

250 ml cream

1 shot of espresso mixed with 1 dsp. of powdered coffee

2 tbsp icing sugar

Whip the cream until soft peaks. Mix together the coffee mixture and the icing sugar. Add your desired amount of coffee mixture to the cream (depending on how strong you want the flavor to be) and beat until stiff but not over whipped.

Coffee icing

1 ½ cup icing sugar

50 g butter

1 shot of espresso mixed with 1 dsp. of powdered coffee

1 tsp vanilla essence

1 - 2 tablespoons of cream

¼ cup white chocolate drops, melted

Beat all the ingredients together, except the white chocolate and cream. Add the cream, a little at a time, until you get a free flowing, smooth icing. If it is to thick add more cream. 

Assembly

Cut the éclairs in half then pipe the cream filling onto the bottom half with a star tip nozzle. Dip the top half in the coffee icing and drizzle over the melted white chocolate using a piping bag with a very small hole cut to make a fine line of the chocolate. Place the top half on the bottom half and repeat this proses till all the éclairs are used up. Store in the fridge.