eclairs for afternon tea

The naked eclairs fresh from the oven....

...and all dressed up ready for afternoon tea.

The TWD recipe this week - Peppermint cream puff ring - was selected by Caroline of A Consuming Passion. I love choux pastry in absolutely any form, sweet or savoury, and profiteroles with ice cream, chocolate sauce and toasted almonds are one of my favourite desserts - the perfect blend of crisp, soft, hot and cold - love it. I halved the recipe and made eclairs for ease of serving...although I have to say the ring is far more grand looking. We took them over to some friends for afternoon tea - the ulterior motive of which was to have a play on their Rocket espresso machine, in the hope that we will one day (soon?!) own one ourselves.

I found the pastry part of this one was straight forward. Normally I don't add sugar or milk to my choux, so I was interested in how fast these would brown up - they cooked beautifully.I instead had a bit of an issue with the peppermint part of this recipe...I infused the cream as Dorie says but our mint is not the healthiest looking plant at the moment, so the leaves were less than lush. In the end the cream didn't taste particularly minty, and in a moment of haste (we were due out the door as I was titivating the eclairs...) I added a splash of the Mrs Thomas's mint syrup I had in the fridge to intensify the 'mintiness'. Bad idea. This has a white vinegar base and while it is sweet and is fantastic over fruit and other desserts it did not work well with the cream. At all.

Luckily there was just enough cream was left in the bottom of the bottle that could be swiftly whipped and flung ino the elairs. Thus traditional chocolate elairs it was - simple but so good. I love the idea of the minted cream - and will try it again once that mint supply is back up and running...