Making Éclairs: A Step-by-Step Guide by Chef Caleb

When it comes to making éclairs, having the right ingredients is crucial. In this tutorial, we will go through the process of making éclairs from scratch. We'll start by separating the eggs and making a bechamel sauce.

We begin by cracking an egg into a bowl and whisking it until the whites and yolks are fully separated. The resulting mixture consists of our separated yolks and our whites, which we will use in subsequent steps. To beat the whites, we add a tiny bit of salt and cream of tartar to help stabilize them. We place the bowl on an electric mixer using the whisk attachment, making sure it's plugged in, and start beating the whites until they form stiff peaks. Over-whipping can result in scrambled eggs, so it's essential to stop when the mixture is just stiff.

While the egg whites are whipping, we'll enrich our bechamel sauce with the egg yolks. We add one yolk at a time to the warm bechamel sauce, whisking until each yolk is fully incorporated and smooth. This process may seem time-consuming, but it's essential for achieving the right consistency and flavor in our éclairs. As we add each yolk, the mixture will thicken slightly and turn a shade of yellow, signaling that it's ready.

Now that our bechamel sauce is enriched, we're ready to fold in the egg whites. We take the stiff peaks of egg whites and gently stir them into the bechamel sauce without over-mixing. This step requires patience and finesse, as we want to maintain a delicate balance between the two mixtures. If we over-fold, the éclairs will become tough and lose their light, airy texture.

Next, we add a quarter of the egg white mixture to the bechamel sauce to start combining them. We don't need to make sure they're fully incorporated at this stage; our goal is simply to bring them together slightly. After adding the first portion, we reserve just a tiny bit of cheese to decorate on top later and gently stir in the remaining two-thirds of the egg white mixture. This step requires gentle folding, so we can see swirls of egg white and bechamel sauce still present.

As we add more of the egg white mixture, our éclairs will start to take shape. We continue folding until they're just combined – not smooth or uniform. It's essential to resist the temptation to overmix, as this will result in a tough, dense pastry.

With our éclairs now assembled, it's time to add the final touches. We reserve a small amount of cheese for decoration and gently stir it into the top of each éclair. Now we can pipe them into prepared ramekins or molds, depending on their size. Our éclairs should have enough room for more than the ones we've made, but this will depend on the size of your ramekins.

Finally, we'll place our éclairs in a preheated oven at 375°F (190°C) and bake them for 25-35 minutes or until they're golden brown. We should be cautious when removing them from the oven as they may fall; however, with practice, you'll develop the skills to handle delicate pastries like this.

Our éclairs are now baked, and it's time to assemble and serve. To finish them off, we can drizzle some cheese sauce or sprinkle grated cheese on top for added flavor and texture. When done correctly, these éclairs will be light, airy, and beautifully golden brown with a delicate crust.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enand welcome back to love your food this week we have a classic French recipe for you that we think you're gonna love this is straight out of Julia Child's the joy of French cooking and it is a cheese souffle this is the traditional method for a cheese to play don't be put off by how complicated people may make this sound it's actually not all that tough it is a little finicky but we're gonna just get going in the ingredients here so we're gonna be using some eggs we have some flour not very much just a little bit we have some cayenne pepper some nutmeg and some salt here we have some bread crumbs now this is going to be used to line our ramekins we have some milk we have some butter separated into two part of that is going to be part of the sauce and part it's gonna be two lines of those cups and some cheese obviously now this is the same medium cheddar we used for our cheese soup last week so we're gonna start by getting our ramekins ready we're just gonna do a little bit of that butter into each of them so this is the smaller portion of the butter and we're just gonna give those ramekins a little rub with the butter make sure they're well coated on the inside we just want to make sure that they have a good a good coating of the butter and that's going to be what holds the breadcrumbs in to keep everything from sticking inside the containers so once you have those lined you're just gonna add a little bit of the bread crumbs into a couple of them and give it a little swirl around make sure that they're all nicely coated on the inside with those bread crumbs just give it a little tap at the end to get any extra out and you can move them on to the next ramekin very very easy this is just gonna make sure that nothing sticks to the inside of your ramekins and there you go once those are all done you can move on to grading your cheese so we're just gonna use the large grader on our box grater here now traditionally this is frequently done with something like a parmesan or the traditional French is really with a Swiss or a menthol or something like that Comte is delicious in this but if you don't have access to those or this is easier to find we're just using a regular sort of Cracker Barrel Black Diamond standard medium cheddar it works just fine it'll be it'll be delicious as well so we're gonna put some heat under a pot and we're gonna start by melting the larger portion of our butter and you want to make sure that this gets all well melted and this is gonna be the base of our bechamel in here so we're just going to break that up a little bit so that make it melt a little faster and we're gonna wait until that is all well melted and then we're gonna add our flour we're gonna give that a good stir we want to make sure it's blended well we don't want any lumps in this for sure so we're gonna keep giving this a good stir until it's nice and smooth and this is gonna form the base of our bechamel so just give that a nice stir until it is smooth and begins to cook so once you see that there are no more lumps of flour or anything it's gonna start cooking very quickly as soon as you've noticed that it starts to stick a little bit to the bottom and gets a little bit foamy that means it's cooked so here is what this is what it's gonna look like so you can see it's foaming up a little bit it's just starting to stick at the bottom a bit it is ready to go so what we have done is we have scalded our milk so this milk you can scold it in a pot or if you don't want to use another pot you can scald it in the microwave in a glass container and we're just gonna add that hot milk into our sauce now we bring up the whisk and we just want to make sure that this gets nice and well blended once again so back onto the heat but we're gonna turn it way way down and we're gonna give that a good stir and you can see already it has thickened up that is our bechamel so that's gonna cook for a little while we're gonna add our spices now so the salt the nutmeg and the cayenne pepper gets added now and we're not done with this yet because the next step from here is we're going to enrich this with some egg yolks so give that a good stir until it is nice and frothy and you can see that everything is well blended and it has thickened up nicely it's really really excellent simple bechamel sauce and that's it for that part we're just gonna make sure that everything is excellent and smooth in there jemelle just cooks together so you can see here that it is all well cooked it is getting nice and smooth it is thickening up even more as we're cooking it on that low low heat and then we're just gonna take that off the heat for a moment and that part is done so that can sit now so now we're going to separate our eggs now the traditional recipe calls for six if sorry five egg whites and four egg yolks now our recipe is a little bit complicated as you can see by the first egg we opened had two yolk in it now that really is fine it means we're gonna have slightly more yolk because it's two smaller yolks so when you see us putting five yolks in later remember the two of them are very very small but we are separating our eggs so it is five egg whites and four egg yolks for this one you can use the other yolk for anything else that you might need an egg yield for so here we have our separated yolks and our whites and we are going to now we are going to beat the whites so the we're gonna put this into our mixer using our whisk attachment you can do this by hand but it's certainly easier to to do it with a an electric mixer making sure it's plugged in of course and we're gonna add a tiny bit of salt to this and also as we did with the egg whites that we beat for the marshmallow fluff we're gonna add a tiny bit of cream of tartar or tartaric acid again this is something you can get in the baking aisle of most grocery stores it's just a white powder in the spice rack or in the baking aisle and usually called cream of tartar we're just adding a little bit of that all the amounts of the ingredients of course are going to be in the description below as usual and while that's whipping we're gonna start enriching our bechamel here with with the egg yolks so we're just gonna add them one at a time and whip them in until they are well blended you don't want to make scrambled eggs here so one of the time until they are just blend and smooth in there and you can see that turning a little bit yellow getting a little richer it's gonna be a little thicker when this is all done and here are our little tiny ones at the end here now remember normally this should be four but we had two tiny ones from our first egg which was a double yolk and that's it so that's done our bechamel is now enriched it's still nice and warm so now we're gonna go back to our egg whites and they should be stiff peaks but don't over whip them this is just about right maybe a tiny bit over and that is definitely stiff peaks so we're going to take that over to our enriched bechamel and we're gonna add just about a quarter of it just to start now right now it's not quite thick enough to be able to fold it so the first bit we're just gonna stir it in without disturbing too much doesn't have to be come in uniform for this if there are little swirls of egg white and the enriched bechamel that's fine so we're gonna also add our cheese reserving just a little tiny bit to to just decorate on top and just give that a gentle stir in so you can see that first bit mostly is gone smooth so now we're gonna add another about third of what we had left and we're just gonna give that a gentle gentle stir we just want to fold it we don't want to combine it completely we don't want it necessarily smooth at this point and at this point we can add the rest of it in and you just want it combined just barely doesn't have to be smooth you can see chef Caleb here is just sort of letting it go through the the whisk together to combine and that's as far as you have to go with this you don't have to get it much more uniform than this as we add the last little bit you just want it yeah just barely combined and this is the tricky part because the the temptation to overmix this is very strong you definitely feel like it's not quite smooth enough or it's not it doesn't have to be this is about where you want it so at this point you can start adding it to your prepared ramekins now depending on the size of your ramekins you may have enough for more than this you may have you may have the right amount for the number of ramekins you have it really depends on the size so we ended up having enough for seven of them and we're just going to decorate the top with a little bit of cheese and that's gonna melt nicely in the oven give it a good texture and a nice bit of color on top and that's gonna go in the oven so we're gonna put that in for 25 minutes really you should reduce the temperature to 375 and goes for 25 to 35 minutes you have to be a little bit careful because they can fall but as you can see ours came out perfectly 25 minutes and they were done they puffed up beautifully nice golden-brown top on on the top there they cracked a little bit that just came out absolutely perfect and they were delicious they were fantastic you can serve this with a little bit of a sauce you can drizzle some cheese sauce on top of that fantastic it's absolutely delicious not as complicated as people make it out to be they're amazing if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see chef Caleb try our Channel please let us know in the comments below and remember to love your foodand welcome back to love your food this week we have a classic French recipe for you that we think you're gonna love this is straight out of Julia Child's the joy of French cooking and it is a cheese souffle this is the traditional method for a cheese to play don't be put off by how complicated people may make this sound it's actually not all that tough it is a little finicky but we're gonna just get going in the ingredients here so we're gonna be using some eggs we have some flour not very much just a little bit we have some cayenne pepper some nutmeg and some salt here we have some bread crumbs now this is going to be used to line our ramekins we have some milk we have some butter separated into two part of that is going to be part of the sauce and part it's gonna be two lines of those cups and some cheese obviously now this is the same medium cheddar we used for our cheese soup last week so we're gonna start by getting our ramekins ready we're just gonna do a little bit of that butter into each of them so this is the smaller portion of the butter and we're just gonna give those ramekins a little rub with the butter make sure they're well coated on the inside we just want to make sure that they have a good a good coating of the butter and that's going to be what holds the breadcrumbs in to keep everything from sticking inside the containers so once you have those lined you're just gonna add a little bit of the bread crumbs into a couple of them and give it a little swirl around make sure that they're all nicely coated on the inside with those bread crumbs just give it a little tap at the end to get any extra out and you can move them on to the next ramekin very very easy this is just gonna make sure that nothing sticks to the inside of your ramekins and there you go once those are all done you can move on to grading your cheese so we're just gonna use the large grader on our box grater here now traditionally this is frequently done with something like a parmesan or the traditional French is really with a Swiss or a menthol or something like that Comte is delicious in this but if you don't have access to those or this is easier to find we're just using a regular sort of Cracker Barrel Black Diamond standard medium cheddar it works just fine it'll be it'll be delicious as well so we're gonna put some heat under a pot and we're gonna start by melting the larger portion of our butter and you want to make sure that this gets all well melted and this is gonna be the base of our bechamel in here so we're just going to break that up a little bit so that make it melt a little faster and we're gonna wait until that is all well melted and then we're gonna add our flour we're gonna give that a good stir we want to make sure it's blended well we don't want any lumps in this for sure so we're gonna keep giving this a good stir until it's nice and smooth and this is gonna form the base of our bechamel so just give that a nice stir until it is smooth and begins to cook so once you see that there are no more lumps of flour or anything it's gonna start cooking very quickly as soon as you've noticed that it starts to stick a little bit to the bottom and gets a little bit foamy that means it's cooked so here is what this is what it's gonna look like so you can see it's foaming up a little bit it's just starting to stick at the bottom a bit it is ready to go so what we have done is we have scalded our milk so this milk you can scold it in a pot or if you don't want to use another pot you can scald it in the microwave in a glass container and we're just gonna add that hot milk into our sauce now we bring up the whisk and we just want to make sure that this gets nice and well blended once again so back onto the heat but we're gonna turn it way way down and we're gonna give that a good stir and you can see already it has thickened up that is our bechamel so that's gonna cook for a little while we're gonna add our spices now so the salt the nutmeg and the cayenne pepper gets added now and we're not done with this yet because the next step from here is we're going to enrich this with some egg yolks so give that a good stir until it is nice and frothy and you can see that everything is well blended and it has thickened up nicely it's really really excellent simple bechamel sauce and that's it for that part we're just gonna make sure that everything is excellent and smooth in there jemelle just cooks together so you can see here that it is all well cooked it is getting nice and smooth it is thickening up even more as we're cooking it on that low low heat and then we're just gonna take that off the heat for a moment and that part is done so that can sit now so now we're going to separate our eggs now the traditional recipe calls for six if sorry five egg whites and four egg yolks now our recipe is a little bit complicated as you can see by the first egg we opened had two yolk in it now that really is fine it means we're gonna have slightly more yolk because it's two smaller yolks so when you see us putting five yolks in later remember the two of them are very very small but we are separating our eggs so it is five egg whites and four egg yolks for this one you can use the other yolk for anything else that you might need an egg yield for so here we have our separated yolks and our whites and we are going to now we are going to beat the whites so the we're gonna put this into our mixer using our whisk attachment you can do this by hand but it's certainly easier to to do it with a an electric mixer making sure it's plugged in of course and we're gonna add a tiny bit of salt to this and also as we did with the egg whites that we beat for the marshmallow fluff we're gonna add a tiny bit of cream of tartar or tartaric acid again this is something you can get in the baking aisle of most grocery stores it's just a white powder in the spice rack or in the baking aisle and usually called cream of tartar we're just adding a little bit of that all the amounts of the ingredients of course are going to be in the description below as usual and while that's whipping we're gonna start enriching our bechamel here with with the egg yolks so we're just gonna add them one at a time and whip them in until they are well blended you don't want to make scrambled eggs here so one of the time until they are just blend and smooth in there and you can see that turning a little bit yellow getting a little richer it's gonna be a little thicker when this is all done and here are our little tiny ones at the end here now remember normally this should be four but we had two tiny ones from our first egg which was a double yolk and that's it so that's done our bechamel is now enriched it's still nice and warm so now we're gonna go back to our egg whites and they should be stiff peaks but don't over whip them this is just about right maybe a tiny bit over and that is definitely stiff peaks so we're going to take that over to our enriched bechamel and we're gonna add just about a quarter of it just to start now right now it's not quite thick enough to be able to fold it so the first bit we're just gonna stir it in without disturbing too much doesn't have to be come in uniform for this if there are little swirls of egg white and the enriched bechamel that's fine so we're gonna also add our cheese reserving just a little tiny bit to to just decorate on top and just give that a gentle stir in so you can see that first bit mostly is gone smooth so now we're gonna add another about third of what we had left and we're just gonna give that a gentle gentle stir we just want to fold it we don't want to combine it completely we don't want it necessarily smooth at this point and at this point we can add the rest of it in and you just want it combined just barely doesn't have to be smooth you can see chef Caleb here is just sort of letting it go through the the whisk together to combine and that's as far as you have to go with this you don't have to get it much more uniform than this as we add the last little bit you just want it yeah just barely combined and this is the tricky part because the the temptation to overmix this is very strong you definitely feel like it's not quite smooth enough or it's not it doesn't have to be this is about where you want it so at this point you can start adding it to your prepared ramekins now depending on the size of your ramekins you may have enough for more than this you may have you may have the right amount for the number of ramekins you have it really depends on the size so we ended up having enough for seven of them and we're just going to decorate the top with a little bit of cheese and that's gonna melt nicely in the oven give it a good texture and a nice bit of color on top and that's gonna go in the oven so we're gonna put that in for 25 minutes really you should reduce the temperature to 375 and goes for 25 to 35 minutes you have to be a little bit careful because they can fall but as you can see ours came out perfectly 25 minutes and they were done they puffed up beautifully nice golden-brown top on on the top there they cracked a little bit that just came out absolutely perfect and they were delicious they were fantastic you can serve this with a little bit of a sauce you can drizzle some cheese sauce on top of that fantastic it's absolutely delicious not as complicated as people make it out to be they're amazing if you like this recipe please do like and subscribe and if you have any recipes you'd like to see chef Caleb try our Channel please let us know in the comments below and remember to love your food\n"