Chocolate Eclairs With Thick Ganache For French Fridays With Dorie

My blog is sweet this week, first I made chocolate brownie cupcakes with lavender icing and now chocolate éclairs with a thick ganache glaze for French Fridays With Dorie.  I am having so much fun cooking my way through Around My French Table with a group of such talented cooks from all over the country.  Please enjoy the rest of the group here.  I decided to go with chocolate over vanilla because I love chocolate and the picture of the chocolate éclairs in the book looks so inviting.  It's also hard to imagine the vanilla éclairs holding up their end in a competition between chocolate and vanilla.  The chocolate ganache is easy to make, it's just boiling hot heavy cream poured over chopped bittersweet chocolate, wait a few minutes, stir et voilà!  If you're interested in the recipe, you'll have to pick up the book because I'm not supposed to give the recipe here.  I coated the top of each éclair by turning them upside down and dipping them into room temperature ganache.  It goes quickly and takes a few minutes for the ganache to set.  I used the star tip to pipe my éclairs so they have the ridges but after dipping them in the ganache you can really only see the first  ridge before the glaze starts covering up the rest of the top.  I used a plain tip to squiggle pipe the chocolate pastry cream on to the bottom half of the éclair.  A nice touch is to set the top at a slight angle over the pastry cream filled bottom, to show off more of the filling for a nicer presentation.  Okay, enough about making these éclairs.  I want to move on to the question of what does one do with 20 chocolate éclairs with thick ganache?  I decided to drive mine into San Francisco yesterday to serve at my husband Scott's office for a late afternoon pastry break to a group of exhausted accountants.  I put them on two large plates in the kitchen and when I checked back a while later they were gone, a sweet ending that hopefully made everybody happy.  Of course I would make these éclairs again.  I would make them exactly the same way with Dorie's recipe for chocolate pastry cream because it tastes like a luscious chocolate mousse or a thick rich pudding swirled inside a light chocolate dipped pastry and just writing about them makes me want to enjoy another bite.