Sweet Decadenze

Woah!  The weekend is here again, and it is going to be so filled with baking activities for me!

Due to some unforseen circumstances, the party attending my nephew’s birthday celebration has suddenly increased by 10 persons to over 30 in total now.  Minor adjustments have to be made to my initial plan.  That’s really fine by me.  If I can manage, I turn up with 60 cream puffs and 30 fruit tarts.  If I can’t, I just turn up without the latter.

My heart really goes out to my dear cousin and especially Ah Kim (cousin’s mum), who is going to single-handedly prepare the buffet spread for the party.  She is the best cook I’ve ever met!  And you really have to believe me!

Anyway, back to… chocolate éclairs.

Unfortunately for me, The Hubby will be hard at work for the better half of the weekend, working with a team of people I used to work closely with.  Hence for a couple of reasons (including pampering the poor souls who have to work over a weekend and testing out the chocolate whipped cream recipe), I decided to bake some éclairs for the hubby to bring to work tomorrow morning.

He promptly agreed to do so.  I suspect he wanted very much to taste my cream puffs, but refrained from doing so because he dislikes convention whipped cream.  Now that I’m changing it to chocolate whipped cream, it’s a totally whole different story.

- The éclairs (without the filling on the cooling rack) -

- Chocolate Éclairs! -

Chocolate Whipped Cream Filling
4 cup heavy whipping cream
4 tbsp icing sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp cocoa powder

1. Pour the whipping cream, icing sugar, vanilla extract and cocoa powder into a large mixing bowl.
2. Stir until combine.
3. Chill mixing bowl together with its contents, and whisks in the fridge for at least 1 hour.
4. Remove the above from the fridge and whisk mixture at medium to high speed until the cream forms stiff peaks.
5. If not using immediately, store in disposable piping bags, seal well and refrigerate for up to a maxiumum of 3 days.

Yield : sufficient for 40 éclairs or 8 cups

For the topping of the éclairs (which are essentially choux pastry, only that the piping is different from cream puffs), I decided to drizzle some melted chocolate followed by scattering some blanched almonds on top.  Exactly the way it was done during my baking class.

Oh, give me a break, will ya?  I know I’m not very creative, but what do you expect from me now that it’s past midnight, The Hubby is snoozing away in the bedroom, and my 2 golden retrievers are ‘bugging’ me to go to bed!