Salted Caramel Eclairs

This morning I went to the On Cookery School to learn how to make salted caramel eclairs. Choux pastry and salted caramel are two very cool things I’ve been wanting to learn how to do for a long time.  The morning was a great balance between demonstrations and hands on learning within a small class. Our teacher Loretta Liu was brilliant, she clearly has a lifetime of skills and knowledge in the kitchen but was patient, calm and still managed to be funny. We began by making the choux pastry, a task my arms were totally not prepared for, which we then piped in rows and put in the oven. We were then shown how to make salted caramel and how to combine part of it with whipped cream for the filling of the eclairs. We piped this cream into the eclairs, but it was really difficult to tell when they were filled and I could only tell when they began to explode. To finish we dipped the top on the eclairs in more salted caramel. I learnt a lot and ate a lot too!