Help deciphering FRENCH recipe?! French Eclairs-Recipe & pics added

[vfem]

This may sound silly, but I bought a recipe online from a lady in France, for her grandmother's Chocolate Eclairs. I think she did her absolute BEST to change it to English, but most of it is gibberish. I get the majority of it, but some of her measurements are questionable at the least. (She's no help!)

First she says the oven needs to be 410 degrees F to bake the pastery shells for 30 minutes. To me it sounds like they may burn at such a high heat?

Then comes measurement issues. Here's her measurements for the butter in the pastry shell:

"2, 64 oz butter" Now I don't think its 4x64 oz of butter. Each stick is 4 oz. I'm assuming its supposed to be a decimal point not a comma.


Flour states: "4, 23 oz Flour" Same issue?

Then comes the pastry cream problem!

Sugar: "4,5 Oz Sugar"
Flour: "1, 4 or Flour"


Then on to the top glaze/fondant

"1, 75 oz Snow Sugar" ???

"5, 29 oz Black Chocolate"???

I am making these as a birthday gift for my friend tomorrow to bring to the party we're going to. I wanted to do these tonight and now I'm STUMPED!?

 

[Judy]

Snow sugar is probably similar to powdered sugar. I doubt you can buy what they are calling black chocolate in a regular supermarket, though unsweetened would probably be a decent equivalent. They weigh things like flour rather than measure.

Chocolate eclairs are pretty easy to make, once you get the technique of hand beating the flour into the hot liquid down (just beat fast.) I've been making them since I was a kid; it was something my mother and I did together.

Best use an American recipe which uses American ingredients and measurements you can be sure of. They are delicious when freshly homemade, much better than store bought. The dough is called pate a choux, a French term.

If you have something like a Fannie Farmer or Betty Crocker cookbook, you could go with that, or get a recipe online. This one looks good:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/gale-gand/chocolate-eclairs-recipe/index.html

Or you could compare that with your recipe and hope you can guess what she meant. But to be sure you have something good for tomorrow, I'd choose a more dependable recipe, myself.

 

[Yard full o' rocks]

I work for a French Canadian company and you are correct, they use a comma "," where we would use a decimal point "."

Hope that helps

 

[h4ppy-chris]

Snow Sugar = iceing suger, black chocolate = dark chocolate

 

[BrattishTaz]

I am assuming she translated to recipe for you. Perhaps you could request the original version in French. Someone here may be able to help you sort it out better then. I've had the same problems with "Spanglish" recipes.

 

[vfem]

Thank you guys!

I have the eclairs baking now. I have no problem doing the flour and stuff by weight, I have kitchen scales just for sure a thing as I LOVE to bake!

I have seen the 'american' version and I am NOT a fan. They are slightly different so I wanted to go for something authentic. American eclairs are like cheap donuts to me.

So I've fixed everything and translated to what I can understand. The eclairs are baking, the pudding filling is cooling and then I will make the chocolate fondant/icing. I figured it was powdered sugar so I used what I had on hand, I hope it was fine enough.

I will post the recipe with all the corrections and pictures as soon as I'm done. My daughter is ecstatic and helped me the whole way through. It wasn't easy for a 4 year old, but she adores baking with mama!

 

[vfem]

Quote:
That is EXACTLY what happened! She took the french version and translated it for me!

The funniest translation was her explaination of creating the cream. She said "no turning, pour warmed milk into bowl of egg mix" "put mix back in pan and bring to boil point. Only let the bubble go "plop plop" soft. If loud PLOP turn back fire."

HAHAHAHA

 

[vfem]

All done, and DD gives them 2 thumbs up!

 

[vfem]

Ok, here's how the recipe is ending up-

Ingredients:

Pastry Shell:
1 Cup + 1 Tbsp Water
1/4 tsp salt
7 Tbsp Butter cut up
1 Cup (minus 1 Tbsp) Sifted flour
4 Beaten Eggs

Chocolate Cream Filling:
2 Cups + 2 Tbsp Milk
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp Sugar
4 Egg Yolks
1 Tsp Cocoa powder
1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
2 Tbsp Flour Sifted

Fondant/ Chocolate Glaze:
6 oz Melted Chocolate chips
2 Tbsp Melted Butter
1/4 cup powdered sugar
2 Tbsp Water

Preheat oven 410 degrees

Shell Pastry:
* In a saucepan boil water & salt. Add butter in cubed pieces. When melted pour all flour in at one time, reduce heat to med.
*Combine with wooden spoon until all flour is absorbed and remove from heat.
*Allow to cool and slowly add eggs (these should be prebeaten and at room temp). Adding 1/2 the eggs at a time helps. When adding the second half of the eggs, I switched to a whisk, it helped a lot.
*Add pastry mix to pastry bag or zip lock bag with the end cut off. Pipe onto a baking sheet that's been greased or parchment paper. (I use a silicone baking sheet.) Should make between 8-12 medium to small eclairs.
*Place in oven and bake 30 minutes without opening door.
*Remove and poke holes on both end of the eclairs with a toothpick. This allows the steam to escape so they don't get mushy inside.

Pastry Cream Filling:
*Mix Yolks, sugar, vanilla and flour in a medium bowl.
*Warm the milk and cocoa in a small sauce pan until you see some steam come off the milk. Do this on med-low heat slowly.
*pour milk over yolk mixture, stir to combine and the pour back into sauce pan.
*Bring to a soft bowl where you'll see bubbles popping up the side of your sauce pan. After a few pops give it an easy stir and remove from heat. It will thicken more as it cools.
*When cool, cut tops off of eclairs and fill with the cream and place the tops back on them.

Chocolate Glaze:
*Combine water and powdered sugar to dissolve and set aside.
*In another bowl combine chocolate chips and butter. Put in microwave for 1 minute, stopping every 15 second to stir until melted.
*Add the dissolved sugar to the chocolate and mix until combined.
*Use to frost the top of the eclairs and allow to cool on counter or in fridge before serving.

Enjoy!

 

[BrattishTaz]

Thanks you for sharing!

My dad is always begs for eclairs and then complains they are not made right. Let's see how he likes these.