Sunday, January 31, 2010

Moving On

OK, I need to get past this. You see, I've been haunted for the last...wow, almost three months now, by these eclairs! They just never turned out the way I wanted them too, and I've just been too discouraged to talk about them.

It's not that they were bad, mind. They just weren't what I expected them to be. But I watched some Julia Child a couple of weeks ago and one of the things she said was (to paraphrase), "Never apologize; just because it disappoints you doesn't mean the people you're serving know that it's not the way you intended it to be." In effect, keep your mouth shut and everyone will probably think it's just fine. Well, that surely is what happened with these eclairs. My friends thought they were just dandy. Bless them.

But to bring myself to closure here, let me explain what disappointed me. I made the choux paste, and it was fine. For all the kerfluffle out there about how tricky cream puffs are, they're not. You make the batter (you can even do it in a food processor) and steam does all the work for you (which is why I picked this particular dessert for this supper club--the theme was "air" and I felt that a pastry in which the "air" technically did all the work was right in line).

So, crisp little fingers of puffy buttery dough, the creamy custardy filling. No problem, right? Wrong. The directions for these eclairs call for lightening the filling with whipping cream. Nice idea, but guess what? You can't pipe it. If you look inside a cream puff or gougere, you'll see that the steam has indeed fluffed everything up nicely, but it leaves this sort of spider webby network of dough that you have to force aside to while you're filling them. That light airy cream just didn't have enough muscle for the job.

As a result, I was forced to slit the eclairs down the side and plop the filling in. Worst thing in the world? Of course not. Actually the way the instructions described the filling process? Why, yes. Not in line with my personal expectations? Ah, no, and this is where we come to the crux of the problem, and the aforementioned haunting.

It's not that they turned out badly, or even that they turned out differently than the recipe described, it's that they did not meet my expectations, and because I let myself down, I labeled them a flop. Of course I didn't stop cooking after this, I just stopped talking about it here. I was too mortified by my own perceived failure to come back and discuss it.

So now I am back, and I have discussed it. I didn't mention that the chocolate glaze let me down too, in part because I waited too late to make it and it didn't harden up the way it was supposed to until the next day. Again, my fault. If I'd made the chocolate in the morning, it would probably have been fine by 5 p.m. or so, when I needed to use it.

Well, live and learn. I think I have some pictures of this mortifying experience somewhere.

Right, you see? Fine. They're fine. The picture is a little heavy on glare for my taste, but I didn't edit it at all, just dropped it in here.
Now that we're past that, I'll start working on some other things that won't disappoint. I'm not even going to bother giving you the recipe for the eclairs, I'm so annoyed at how I let them ruin my life for three months. They are dead to me. Let's move on!

4 comments:

missy said...

oh i'm so glad to see a resolution to the eclair cliffhanger! i'm making your jul-6-09 brownies again (i just think of them as 'ZOMG brownies' thanks to your post about them, heh) so i thought i'd also check on the eclair situation while here. they LOOK like they tasted good, at any rate! i've seen other recipes that call for adding whipped cream into the custard filling, but i just ignore that step. i'm with you, i like a nice thick custard that can do the job 'right'! very good point about expectations, though. anyway, good to see you back in action!

p.s. while i'm mentioning things, i'd like to add that your lemony header-pic makes me happy. so simple, so sunny, so...LEMONY. mmmmm! =D

TD said...

Thanks! Enjoy those brownies--I can't make them too often because I will Eat. Them. All. I have zero self-control when it comes to brownies!

Glad you like the header--I thought we needed a little sprucing up around here!

T

Anonymous said...

hello


just signed up and wanted to say hello while I read through the posts


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Lisa said...

The Eclair post is hilarious.... Love your site!