Emma Baking Podcast

The speaker baked eclairs and shared their overall experience. They made mistakes with the dough and the pudding filling, but learned from them. The second batch turned out better, and their brother enjoyed them. Cleaning up was time-consuming. The speaker would bake them again with a helper. Baking takes trial and error but is worth it. Baking is an art and knowing the basics opens up many possibilities. The speaker hopes to inspire others to bake eclairs successfully. Hello, so I just baked some eclairs and I have my brother here with me who will get to try one in a few minutes. For now, I just wanted to go over my overall experience baking these eclairs and then some of the challenges and mistakes that I made just so you should be aware to not make these mistakes. I'm not the best at baking, but I try. I'm usually baking from a box so everything is already measured out for you and there's very little that can go wrong, but I am pretty good at following a recipe, but eclairs, they are very tricky to make and even the most experienced bakers can make mistakes and so I'm just going to go over some of the ones that I noticed and one of the first things that I noticed was my pata choux dough got a little lumpy and that was because I added the eggs in to the rest of the mixture before it cooled. So I had water and butter and some flour. I mixed it all together and you're supposed to let it cool for a few minutes, but I was really excited. I really wanted to bake them and so I added my eggs in a little too soon and what happened there is that the dough ended up cooking before it cooled down and so because of that it got really lumpy and that will have an effect on your overall bake. The second thing that I noticed was that my eclairs looked a little deflated so the question is what did I do wrong here? So I went to the internet in search for answers and this is actually a very common mistake. So if your eclairs look flat then you may have added too much liquid and not enough flour. They may also be this way if they get pulled from the oven too early. It is also possible that opening up your oven while the eclairs are baking will cause them to deflate and this last reason is why I think mine ended up being a little flat because when you open your oven up the heat will escape and then your eclair dough won't be as puffy anymore. So the second time that I baked these I just had to be careful to measure things out, not add too much water or butter and just make sure that everything is perfectly measured because that is the most important thing because having the improperly measured things will throw everything off. I also had plans to put whipped cream inside but I thought vanilla pudding would be more interesting so I did make the vanilla pudding but it did not turn out very well. I had the same problem with the eclair dough, it did turn out to be pretty lumpy and I was kind of disappointed in this so I went to the store and I just bought some pudding mix and I felt a little bad for doing this but it is entirely okay if you want to go to the store and buy some whipped cream or pudding mix, like that is entirely okay. So the next batch I put it in the oven, I timed it perfectly, I didn't open it at all so the dough wouldn't be deflated and the dough actually turned out to be pretty normal. It looked like what I was used to when I baked it with my parents. So afterwards I made the chocolate sauce that goes on top and this was also pretty hard because I had only some chocolate and some milk and I put the milk inside the microwave which was not a good idea because it got everywhere and I added my chocolate and this actually also got a little lumpy and so I just put it in the microwave again and it turned out to be okay and so I just drizzled it on top of the eclair, kind of hide some of the cracks inside and yeah it looked good, it was definitely better than my first batch. My first batch was not edible at all, like I would not have eaten them, they didn't look cooked at all, so the second batch was way more successful and afterwards cleaning up was a very long process, it took hours, the dough was very sticky, but it was worth it, it was a lot of fun. And now I would like to introduce my brother Jackson who I am here with on spring break. He's very lucky because I brought him in eclair all the way to Spain where he's staying and he's seen me bake quite often and we've done some baking, but I just want him to try this eclair and see what he thinks, so if Jackson you want to take it from here? Wow, I really like this, the dough turned out really nice. I know that pate a choux can be tough to make, but yeah, I feel like you nailed it. I really like the pudding in the middle, it's a nice custard flavor, very vanilla-y. My favorite part though, I think it's the chocolate on top that's the best. It's not too sweet which I really like. I, yeah, I see why people would really want to bake these, I'm not sure if I'd be able to, but would definitely try at some point. Okay, so Jackson seems to enjoy these eclairs and he's tried some of my baking before and he's a harsh critic, but this is good. So thank you Jackson, I will let you go about your day, you're welcome. So would I bake these again? Maybe, but I would need a helper, it would be nice to have somebody just to talk it out with. I ended up making a huge mess in the kitchen and I was pretty disappointed in how the first batch turned out. I ended up throwing all of those away, which I just hate having to do, but the second batch turned out to be a lot more successful, most likely because I was focusing more and I learned from my original mistakes, and it is hard to get exactly what is wrong when there could be multiple reasons, but the internet has been very helpful in just telling me what I should do. So my advice is don't be afraid to mess up, for all the novice bakers out there, it does take a lot of trial and error, baking is a lot of time, it will get messy, but it is so worth it in the end, and if you get better at it, then you can make so many different things and try so many different foods, and that is just the beauty of it. So as I say, baking is a science and cooking is an art, but I think baking in itself is very artistic, there is a lot you can do in baking, and just knowing the basics of how to do it will open up so many doors for you, but you just have to get through that first very very messy, very very challenging step. So I hope that you are inspired to do a little more baking after this, and that your eclairs will turn out to be really nice.