Tasted better than it looked
Are you kidding me? They look amazing, they most taste amazing then
Another weekend, another day in the kitchen.
Rhubarb Eclairs with Ginger Icing
These were so tasty. A friend of mine who hadn't tried much of my sweet stuff was really surprised of how much the rhubarb custard actually tasted of rhubarb. Well, this is the result when you use great ingredients, fresh from the garden instead of using factory-made powder. There's a world of difference. Initially I was afraid that the ginger icing would be too strong, it burned a lot when I had a taste while making the icing, but being cooled down and drowned in wonderful rhubarb custard, subdued the spiciness to a tingling sensation back in your mouth. I love the combination of rhubarb and ginger and eclairs as the frame certainly doesn't take away from it, just the contrary.
~Recipe~
Ingredients
Rhubarb Custard
Fills ~15 eclairs
400 g rhubarb, chopped
75 g sugar
1 lemon
6 egg yolks
125 g sugar
60 g flour
300 ml cream
100 ml whole milk
½ vanilla bean
Choux Pastry
Yields ~20 eclairs
100 g butter
250 ml water
130 g flour
3-4 eggs
Ginger Icing
1 tsp ginger powder
300 g powdered sugar
Couple of tbsp hot water
Directions
Rhubarb Custard
- Put rhubarb, sugar and juice from the lemon in a pant with a lid on. Cook it on low heat until the rhubarb starts to dissolve. Stir and turn to the lowest heat and take the lid off to evaporate the water. This can take 20-30 minutes. You may want to blend the rhubarb, as you want a fine smooth custard when piping the eclairs.
- Scrape out the vanilla seeds and add them to milk, cream and the empty vanilla bean in a small saucepan. Bring to a boil.
- In the meantime whisk egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl for a couple of seconds, then add the flour add whisk well.
- When the cream reaches the boiling point pour it in a stream to the yolk mixture while whisking. Then pour the mixture back to the pan on low heat. Keep whisking all the time to avoid burning the mixture.
- Near boiling point the mixture will thicken, turn to lowest heat and keep whisking for a minute or two. You want it to be rather thick as the rhubarb will thin it down.
- Add the rhubarb mixture and whisk it to a uniform custard. Cool in fridge while making the choux pastry.
Choux Pastry
- Preheat the oven at 200°C. Prepare a baking pan with parchment paper.
- Cook water and butter in a saucepan.
- Once the butter has melted and the water comes to a boil, add the flour while beating(use a wooden spoon or mixer)
- Once the mixture has combined and comes off the saucepan and spoon, take it off the heat to cool for a couple of minutes.
- Add eggs one at a time, and beat well each time. Once the dough gets this shiny, wet appearance (around the 3rd or 4th egg) it's ready.
- Scoop up the dough in a piping or plastic bag, and pipe your desired sized eclairs on the baking pan. Remember that coux pastry almost doubles in size (length and wide) when baking in the oven
- Bake at 200°C for 25 mins or until they become golden. DON'T open the oven before they are done, as that will let the steam out of the eclairs making them collapse.
- You can let them cool off inside the turned off oven, half open, but they'll make it if you take them out due to another batch waiting to be baked. Make sure to cut the piping hole open as you take them of the oven. This will let the steam out and have them be ready to be filled.
Ginger Icing
- Add hot water one of tbsp at a time to the powdered sugar and ginger, mix well to get any lumps out and apply one tbsp to each eclair.
source for rhubarb custard
