GBBO Cardamom Mango Eclairs

Well it's that time of the week again, goodbye fasting, hello cake and The Great British Bake Off. So as per usual, I've been in the kitchen baking away my own little showstopper.

Cardamom has to be one of my favourite flavours, it's found in a lot of Nordic Bakes so reminds me of summers in Finland and my Mummu's (grandmother's) homemade cinnamon buns wafting from the oven.

Of course, cardamom is also traditional in Indian cooking, and I've always wanted to try the combination of this pungent spice with mango.

So for my eclairs I've done that by adding cardamom to my choux pastry mixture and then made a mango creme patisserie filling.

I'm so happy with the final product and can't wait to share it with you!

So here goes!

Well the first attempt didn't go so well... then I used good old Delia's recipe for Choux pastry and it went a LOT better!

I think the difference was that I beat it for longer on the pan, and also used a bigger pan, meaning that the flour could cook off better. I also beat the mixture before adding the eggs to let out some of the steam.

I also followed this recipe from bbc food for the creme patisserie, adding a heaped teaspoon of cardamom to the milk when I was heating it up. Once the creme patisserie had cooled I put it in a piping bag and piped it on the inside of the eclair adding some mango slices on top.

Then for the icing I melted 50g of dark chocolate with two tablespoons of warm water and melted it in the microwave. I then added some icing sugar to thicken the mixture and piped onto the eclairs placing the sliced mango on top.  

Overall I was pleased with how they came out. Though if I were to do it again, I would pipe the creme patisserie into the eclair without cutting it open, as I think it would have looked and held together better.

So that's it for another week. SO looking forward to GBBO again tonight, can't believe it's almost over so going to savour these final precious weeks with P-Hoz and M-Bez. Sigh.