An August Daring Baker's Challenge

Do you know what day this is? Not only is it the 31st of August and a Sunday, but it is also the day I get to reveal to you, my darling readers, the Daring Baker's Challenge for this past month and how I did with it!

Yes, not only am I a Dorieite, but I'm also a Daring Baker . . . a member of that wonderful group of bakers that rise to a SINGULAR baking challenge each month and when I say challenge I truly mean challenge for it has presented me with some of my greatest baking challenges ever. With the Daring Bakers I have been able to face many of my baking fears and conquer some of them if not all.

I'm afraid due to work commitments, weddings and vacations I have been a very bad Daring Baker for the past several months, but I'm happy to say that I am back this month having conquered one of my all time fears, and successfully too, I might add! Yes, the dreaded Choux Pastry! Our challenge this month was chosen by MeetK and Tony Tahhan , who chose a lovely recipe Pierre Hermé from a cookbook written by Dorie Greenspan: Chocolate Desserts By Pierre Hermé . I have long wanted this cookbook, but sadly have never been able to procure a copy. Never mind, I have finally been able to bake something from it and SUCCESSFULLY! (Did I happen to mention that I conquered choux pastry!)





As some of you may know, Choux pastry is an enemy to me. Something that I have struggled with from the time I was a tentative teen up until just recently when I tried to make a Choux pastry ring for my other baking group. I was not looking forward to this challenge and, indeed, if I hadn't already missed three (count them one, two, three) Daring Baker's Challenges, I would have chosen to skip this one as well. But since I love the group and I had no desire to be booted out I rose to the challenge and am I glad I did, because I finally managed to make some Choux pastry SUCCESSFULLY! (you better get used to that word!)



I have to say that the recipe was a very good one and quite easy to follow, but then that's no surprise considering that Dorie wrote it, and as you know I am a fan of hers. Anyways, I followed it step by step meticulously as I didn't want yet another choux pastry failure under my belt. I'm happy to say that I did it! YES!! I did manage to make some eclair shapes SUCCESSFULLY!

This eclair recipe had three elements to it. First there was the choux pastry of course (SUCCESS) and then there was a chocolate pastry cream and a chocolate glaze. However we were given a bit of leeway in order to enable us to show some creativity with the recipe:

1. The dough used for the eclairs must be a pâte à choux from the given recipe.
2. Keep one chocolate element in the challenge. The recipe below is for a chocolate glaze and a chocolate pastry cream. You choose which chocolate element you want to keep. Then feel free to mix and match flavors to the base recipe.
3. Everything else is fair game. Enjoy!



I chose to keep the chocolate glaze and decided that I would turn them into profiterole eclairs and use an ice cream filling instead of the chocolate pastry cream. I hope that this was ok and within the standards of the challenge, but let me tell you I was just so darned happy that I had managed the pastry that I couldn't think straight! (Not to mention time and me running out of it being a large factor!)

I had some delicious raspberry ripple ice cream leftover from one of my Dorie Challenges that I needed to use up so that was my filling of choice.



My chocolate glaze ended up being very shiny and I don't think it photographed very well for me, but that could be because I was not patient in waiting for it to set up.

The fabulous thing was that the making of these delicious delights coincided with the visit of my Visiting Teachers for the month so I was able to treat them, which they were quite happy with! Usually they feed my spirit and it was so nice for me to get to feed them for a change!



All in all I would have to say that I was quite happy with my results for this challenge, even if I did cop out and not make the pastry cream. I have always wanted to have a profiterole and never have so it was a first for me, and to have one that I baked myself and that was the size of an eclair . . . well . . . that was the icing on the cake for me! Oh, I do love a challenge and I do love belonging to this group. It enables me to stretch myself, and tread in places only Daring Bakers dare to tread!

Hop on over to the Blog Roll and see all the other delicious creations for the month! I am sure MeetaK will have the recipe posted on What's For Lunch Honey at some point today, but if not you can access it HERE !