Easy Peasy Chocolate Eclairs By Carlene O’Connor
Journey to Ireland’s lush countryside with USA Today bestselling author Carlene O’Connor’s Irish Village Mysteries, where local officer Siobhán O’Sullivan keeps busy investigating crimes and helping her five kooky siblings run their family’s local bistro. With her upcoming wedding to longtime fiancé Macdaras fast approaching, she really has her hands full in Murder on an Irish Farm, but local bookshop owners Oran and Padraig deliver a moment of sweet relief when they give her some of these homemade chocolate eclairs…
Ingredients
Instructions
Choux Pastry
- Preheat the oven to 180. Line two baking trays with parchment paper.
- In a medium saucepan combine the milk, water, butter, sugar, and salt. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the butter has melted and the mixture just comes to a boil. Remove from the heat.
- Add the flour to the milk mixture and mix it in with a wooden spoon until incorporated. Place the saucepan back on the heat and mix with the wooden spoon until you have a smooth ball that comes away easily from the sides of the saucepan.
- Place the dough into the bowl of a stand mixer and, using beater attachments, mix for 2 to 3 minutes, or until the dough cools down.
- Add the eggs one at a time and mix thoroughly after each addition. The dough should form a paste. Place the paste in a piping bag with a plain or a large star nozzle. Holding the piping bag at a 45- degree angle, pipe 4-inch strips of the paste onto the prepared baking trays, leaving 2 inches between each.
- Bake at 180 for 10 minutes. Then reduce the heat to 160 and bake for an additional 20 minutes, or until the pastries are golden brown. Remove the pastries from the oven and prick each with a skewer to release the heat. Cool on a wire rack. Once they have cooled, make two holes in the bottom of each with a piping nozzle.
Vanilla Cream
- Combine the cream, sugar, and vanilla in a medium bowl and beat with a whisk until soft peaks form.
- Fold in the yogurt.
- Fill a piping bag with the vanilla cream and place it in the refrigerator to chill.
Chocolate Glaze
- Place the chocolate in a medium bowl.
- Combine the cream, butter, and salt in a small saucepan. Bring just to a boil, stirring, over medium heat.
- Pour the hot cream over the chocolate and whisk until the chocolate has melted completely.
- Keep the glaze warm and set aside.
Assembly
- Assemble the eclairs by piping vanilla cream into each pastry.
- Dip the filled eclairs in the chocolate glaze and shake off the excess.
- Place on a wire rack and allow the glaze to set.
In USA Today bestselling author Carlene O’Connor’s eighth Irish Village Mystery, the long-engaged garda of County Cork, Ireland, Siobhán O’Sullivan and Macdaras Flannery, are about to get married at last. But just as the rowdy O’Sullivan brood and all the regulars of the local bistro have gathered at the church, the nuptials come to an abrupt halt when the discovery of an unidentified skeleton puts the wedding on pause…
If only her mother could be here! The entire O’Sullivan brood—not to mention the regulars from Naomi’s Bistro—have gathered at St. Mary’s Church for the wedding of Siobhán and Macdara. It’s not every day you see two garda marrying each other. Only Siobhán’s brother James is missing. They can’t start without him.
But when James finally comes racing in, he’s covered in dirt and babbling he’s found a human skeleton in the old slurry pit at the farmhouse. What farmhouse? Macdara sheepishly admits he was saving it as a wedding surprise: he purchased an abandoned dairy farm. Duty calls, so the engaged garda decide to put the wedding on hold to investigate.
James leads them to a skeleton clothed in rags that resemble a tattered tuxedo. As an elderly neighbor approaches, she cries out that these must be the remains of her one true love who never showed up on their wedding day, fifty years ago. The garda have a cold case on their hands, which heats up the following day when a fresh corpse appears on top of the bridegroom’s bones. With a killer at large, they need to watch their backs—or the nearly wedded couple may be parted by death before they’ve even taken their vows. . .
Reprinted with permission from Kensington Books.
