GingerBabyMama: July 2013

Hello my friends! I'm back today (after a MONTH away?? How did that happen??)with a recipe!! Last week while aimlessly scrolling on Pinterest I found the most beautiful looking recipe. Now, for an event to make this lovely dessert. Lucky for me (and in turn, all of you) my co-worker and friend starts a new job next week. We are having a big potluck for her, and this lovely cake is my contribution!

I have to admit, I was a little apprehensive about baking the crust, but it turned out golden and gorgeous. And the filling? OH. MY. WORD. The FILLING. It is unbelievable! Soft and light and creamy and glorious. I may have to find a way to make individual éclairs so I can use it in my Quest for the Perfect Cupcake!!

The only issue I ran into was with the chocolate pudding. Since my Walmart didn't have a 5.1 oz box, I ended up buying two regular sized boxes and just keeping the excess pudding out for the girls. Win-Win! Now, without further adieu, here is the recipe!

Chocolate Éclair Cake

Recipe adapted from The Girl Who Ate Everything.com

Ingredients

Crust:
1 cup water
1/2 cup butter
1 cup flour
4 large eggs

Filling:
1 8 ounce package cream cheese, softened
2 102g boxes instant vanilla pudding
4 cups milk

Topping:
1 8 ounce container cool whip (enough to cover the cake, I didn't use the whole container)
Chocolate syrup (you could make your own, but I just used ice cream topping)

Instructions

Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly grease a 9x13 glass baking pan. If the sides of your pan are too heavily greased, the batter will not stick to the sides. Not a huge deal, but it's prettier if the base bakes up the sides.

Here is the crust pre-bake, I tried to pull it the whole way up the sides of the pan

Éclair crust: In a medium saucepan, melt butter in water and bring to a boil, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and use your arm muscles to stir in that flour. At this point, I transferred by batter to my Kitchenaid mixer bowl, because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to mix fast enough - it worked perfectly! Mix in one egg at a time, mixing completely before adding the next egg. Spread the mixture in the pan, covering the bottom and sides evenly. The mixture will be very wet.

Here's the crust after baking, all puffy and golden brown

Bake for 30-40 minutes or until golden brown. Check it occasionally during baking to ensure the crust doesn't burn. Remove from the oven and let cool completely. The crust will likely be puffy and have big bubbles, just leave them, they'll go down on their own.

Filling: Whip the pudding mix and milk according to package directions. When it's all mixed up, remove 1/4 of the pudding into a separate bowl. This excess pudding is not needed for the recipe, so you can enjoy it anytime! Put the pudding into the fridge and wait until it is fully setup before moving on to the next step.

Whip cream cheese in the bowl of your stand mixer. If you don't have a stand mixer, I hope you have strong arm muscles because this process takes a while... Once the cream cheese is nice and smooth, slowly add the pudding to the cream cheese, and continue to whip together. Mix until there are no lumps and the mixture is nice and smooth. This took almost five minutes in my mixer.

When the crust is completely cooled, pour the filling into the crust. Spread out until it is evenly distributed over the entire crust. Top with a layer of cool whip (or if you are really good, some homemade whip cream) and drizzle chocolate syrup on top.