A New Series: Mastering the Art of Baking

For my birthday in 2015, my brother and his then girlfriend (now wife!) gave me this beautiful cookbook from my Amazon wishlist.

I'd found it at the library while shelving. Normally, I'm not one to want to own cookbooks. I get most of my recipes from the internet, plus I find it hard to justify all the space a cookbook takes up when I only like 3 of the recipes.

However, this book is different. I started to flip through the pages, and realized I wanted to make almost every recipe I saw. To be fair, there are several recipes I will never make because I hate feta cheese, but for the most part, I felt like I was looking through a magical book.

Mastering the Art of Baking by Anneka Manning:

(Isn't it beautiful?!)

A few months after my birthday, I gave birth, and I never got around to trying a recipe from the book. I felt like this was something I needed to be able to give a lot of attention to, and I just hadn't had that attention.

Until this spring, when I blocked off a weekend to learn to make choux pastry (and eclairs from that pastry).

Here's my first batch of piped eclairs:

Unfortunately, even after being baked much longer than the recommended time, they were still quite raw inside when I sliced them open. I'm sure they were safe to eat, but no one really wants a doughy eclair.

And this is the part where I have to apologize and promise to work harder to take pictures in the future. I honestly just forgot. I got caught up in the baking, and then the eating, so I have no pictures of the finished product!

At this point, I was upset, but decided to try again. This second time, I tried to cook more liquid off on the stove. After being baked, however, they were still raw inside (though not as raw as the first attempt). This time, I sliced them all open, scooped out the worst of the insides, and then put them back in the oven to dry out the insides that way.

Though unorthodox, this worked. I still hope to figure out what was wrong with my recipe, and have a few other things I can try.

Rather than filling them with the traditional creme patisserie, I instead filled them with whipped chocolate ganache. I glazed them with a simple chocolate glace frosting, just like the book suggested.

Because of the ganache, these were very rich, unlike a traditional eclair, but I thought they were delicious, as did everyone who got to try one.

Love and Ganache,

Leah Joy

P.S. Reminder to self: MAKE THESE AGAIN.