All my ambitious plans of flattening my stomach again are pointless. I love eating too much. I can’t just have 1 eclair, I have 3, with beautiful whipped vanilla cream and the coffee glaze dripping down my fingers. So much more pleasure than sweating on the floor with Ewa Chodakowska, hoping to lose 2 kg around the stomach. Sorry Ewa, eclairs 1, you- 0.

Eclairs were one of the challenges for the Bake Off contestants last Wednesday. Most of them were mixing plain flour with the strong one, hoping to make the choux more stable and drier. I tried that trick, I thought my choux was excellent, but whether it was due to that addition or not, not sure.

For the pastry I used 105g of flour, 30 g of which was  a strong one, 85 g of butter melted in 225 ml of water, a pinch of salt and 3 lightly beaten eggs. Until today I didn’t know I should really cool the flour/ butter/water mix before I add the eggs, now I know. The end result- smooth and shiny dough, ready for the piping bag.

I piped my eclairs quite small, that made me around 16 of them. The sight of eclairs rising in the oven is lovely, I was watching them with Izzie. One day I’ll teach her to bake with me.

They baked for about 25 minutes in 200 degrees, then I got them out of the oven, made a small hole in each and returned them in for another 4 minutes to dry them out.

When ready for dessert, I stuffed them with vanilla cream and finished with coffee glaze- just a double espresso with about 5 tbsps of icing sugar. Keeps nicely in the fridge, our eclairs are being enjoyed for 3 consecutive evenings. Yum.