Dark Chocolate PROTEIN Éclairs! with Sweet Potato Pastry ;-)

I winged in. Yesterday was my birthday and I winged it. I walked into the kitchen and I threw everything I knew out the window: tradition, common practice, and convention. I got rid of every rule in the cookbook and when a voice in my head told me, ‘Anna, you’re going to ruin your eclairs!’ I shushed it and pressed on. A bowl, a pot, three spatulas and a baking tray. Next to it a bag of sweet potato flour. A discarded chocolate wrapper. A piping bag and a tub of whey. My kitchen was a mess! But I didn’t care. I was on a mission – I was making my protein éclairs  And I was having a blast at it. This was the definition of experimental cooking. This was innovation at work. “What’s the worst that can happen?” I kept reminding myself. Either my recipe could either fail disastrously or it could succeed.  So went for it. I made the éclairs, left them to set, and – after a copious amount of sashimi consumption – I shared them with my friends and family. This is what ensued:

“You $&@£%#!@ wizard!”, “This might be one of the best things you’ve ever made, hands down”, “Wohohoa…”, “Jeez Anna…”, “nommmm!”, “OMG! They MELT. IN. YOUR. MOUTH!” and “Can I have the recipe??? So I guess my recipe worked! Although some tweaks COULD be made to it. For example, I think I should have used casein instead of hemp protein and ditched the coconut flour for a creamier filling. But all in all, I was really happy with it and so was everybody else. Here’s the recipe for you guys to try too. It sounds a bit complicated but, trust me, it’s ridiculously easy. Read the notes at the end too.

Ingredients for the Sweet Potato Choux Pastry:

1/2 cup sweet potato flour (read Note 1 below for subs)
3 tablespoons grass fed butter (yes, butter, read Note 2)
1/2 cup water
1/2 tablespoons toffee flavoring
2 whole beaten eggs

Ingredients for the Filling:

1/2 cup chocolate whey protein
1/4 cup chocolate hemp protein powder (read Note 3)
3/4 cup almond milk
1 tablespoon cocoa powder
2 tablespoons coconut flour

Directions:

1. First, melt the water and butter in a pot. Once the butter has melted, add the rest of the pastry ingredients and mix everything until you get a non-sticky dough that comes off the sides of the pot. Add your (beaten) eggs and blend the mix until you get a smooth thick batter.

2. Stick this batter inside a piping bag (or just a sandwich bag with the end cut off) and pipe it onto a baking tray, making 5 elongated ‘éclair shapes’ on it. Bake this at 250 C (302 F) for about 15-20 minutes or until the pastry has cooked through.

3.To make the filling, just mix all the filling ingredients together in a bowl and then stick this in another piping bag.

4.  Make a hole inside each éclair (using a chopstick or a similar utensil) and stuff it with the filling.

5. Finally, add some melted dark chocolate on top or, if you want a creamier sort of topping, you could use a combo of coconut oil and cocoa powder?

Macros per éclair (out of 5):

247kcals
17g protein
15g carbs
12g fat

Notes

1. If you want to sub the sweet potato flour, you can use oat or buckwheat flour. The sweet potato flour is amazing though! It lends a mild sweet-potatoness to the éclairs which I know probably sounds weird but oy! it’s delicious!

2. Please don’t ask me if you can substitute the butter because you can’t and shouldn’t. Choux pastry without butter is the saddest thing on the planet and, truth be told, there’s nothing wrong with butter (the idea that it’s bad for us is largely a myth), especially not 3 tablespoons of it. Don’t substitute the butter with margarine either, please. Margarine is a nutritional abomination and I can’t condone its usage.

3. If you want to substitute the chocolate hemp protein pow, you can use chocolate casein. Just adapt the amount of milk to ensure your filling is nice and creamy.