Flare for the Eclaire

Morning Everyone!
As promised, last night we made Pate Choux. And with the Pate Choux we made pastry cream. And with that Pate Choux and pastry cream we made éclairs and Paris Brests. I will describe these in a bit, first I will describe the process.
If any of you have ever eaten an éclair (and I sincerely hope you all have), then you know that the pastry shell which holds the dough isn’t terribly sweet or flavorful. Pate Choux recipes don’t always call for sugar, and if they do it isn’t much. Admission: I do not like Pate Choux, and I never have. If you cover it up with enough cream its fine, but on its own I find it hard and plain and waxy. It is a very rich dough, made with a lot of eggs and butter and when baked it is sturdy enough to withhold cream (the more the better in my opinion, as the cream is the redeeming part of the éclair/cream puff.
The recipe in our book was off. Each team was instructed to make a large batch of pate choux, which called for 20 eggs (not a typo). First you boil water and butter in a sauce pan. Then add flour and cook it off until you are left with a paste (a panade if you want to get technical). Then, you add eggs one at a time until you come to the correct consistency. The thing is, some groups dough was ready after 16 eggs, others after 18. Word has it that one group used 21!
I was SO good when we were preparing the dough. I let my partner do most of the work, and said nothing when I thought she should be doing things differently (read “correctly”). I think the fasting had a lot to do with my weakened will to boss and take the lead (though this laziness also meant that she still had to do the bulk of the prep work).
The dough is soft and loose. It is place into piping bags and piped out, the éclairs into uniform strips and the Brests into fat circles. One must take care to leave room in between the dough, because as the high heat of the oven (400+) degrees) cooks the dough, the water in the dough steams and they puff into chubby logs and rings. Paris Brests are named after the famed bicycle race from Paris to Brest, Brittany. They are shaped like bicycle wheels (which is to say that are circular) and slit in half, filled with cream, like éclairs.

The pastry cream is a starch bound custard (though some call it stirred) and is very thick when cooled. After making the cream, we chilled it quickly in the blast freezer. Unfortunately, this worked a bit too well and when we tried to use it to fill out pastries it was too thick. To make it more manageable, my teammate and I added Grand Marnier (I might have added a wee bit too much) and then we piped this into the éclairs. The cream we added to the Paris Brests was butter cream mixed with praline- this looked delicious. To decorate the tops, we dipped the éclairs daintily into a chocolate sauce and powdered sugar-ed the tops of the Brests. I don’t know what goes into the chocolate sauce, as it was then that I ran out of class to stuff my face and break my fast. I also missed the different ways one can fill éclairs.

Chef didn’t notice my absence, but upon my return I asked what I thought was a good question but had previously been answered during my gullet-stuffing seven minute dinner. Don’t worry, I managed to parlay the bad question into something less embarrassing (I hope. It’s best not to dwell on these things).
-"there is no such thing as a bad question unless its already been asked" Baer