Hello, Baker!

After secretly stalking and anxiously awaiting the reveal of new challenges for months, I finally went and joined the Daring Bakers for myself! It was a good thing too because for this challenge we had to make chocolate eclairs, but not just any chocolate eclairs! Oh no, sir! These sugarcoated little creatures come from none other than Pierre Hermé, a famous and fantastically gifted French pastry chef that’s an inspiration for me and I’m sure for many, many more.

Before I go any further, I’d like to note that I wrote this entire entry and then Firefox screwed me over and I lost it all. Yes, Firefox, I am very angry at you right now! If your rival IE didn’t suck so much I’d probably make him my new best friend instead. WHAT DO YOU SAY TO THAT, FIREFOX!?

Anyways, this challenge was hosted by Tony and Meeta. You can go to their blogs in order to view the original recipe because it is incredibly long and I am feeling way too lazy to post all it. (However, do not let the length discourage you from making these eclairs because they are fantastic and definitely not as hard as they seem. In fact, I’d say this is was one of the easier challenges I’ve seen the Daring Bakers do so far.) Their posts are also much more graphic than mine would have ever been and having a visual is always a good thing when baking something foreign.

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I do not have the pleasure of baking as often as I’d like because my family is often always on some sort of diet. As much as I’d enjoy eating a plate full of cookies or a dozen deliciously unhealthy cupcakes, I’d much rather eat one and share the rest with other people. Luckily, this weekend was father’s day weekend, my father’s birthday, AND my friend’s birthday. That meant my father would be allowed to break his diet and have whatever I baked AND I could give some of the extras to my friend.

So as usual, I went on my almighty quest to find the next type of cupcakes that most appealed to my fancy. With so many amazing types how was I ever going to choose just one? After countless of long and brutal browses through cupcake images on Flickr and many voyages deep into the vicious jungle of baking blogs, my journey was complete! I finally found the cupcakes I wanted to make!

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