Super Eclairs for the Superbowl

The best cook book I have is a Good Housekeeping book from the 1960s. It has recipes for all sorts of items from scratch. I picked it up at a garage sale about 6 years ago for 50 cents. (Or fi-ee cent if you're Deb). Best cincuenta centavos I ever spent!

My favorite recipe is for eclairs. I make them for special occasions, mostly for friends' birthdays. The second time I ever made them, it was for Super Bowl Sunday and I thought I'd turn them into mini footballs by piping white icing on the tops to look like laces. They were a hit!

Below is an edited version of the recipe. Mainly because I used to make the vanilla custard and whipped cream from scratch. Now I use Jell-O pudding and light Cool Whip. I also have made a few other tweaks.

Mini Eclairs

1/2 cup butter
1 cup water
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 cup all-purpose flour, sifted
4 eggs

Frosting:
2 tablespoons butter
2 ounces semisweet chocolate, chopped (or powdered equivalent)
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 tablespoons water

Filling:
1 small package instant vanilla pudding mix (prepared per package directions
1 regular size tub whipped topping

DIRECTIONS

Prepare pudding with milk according to package directions. Chill in refrigerator.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Line baking sheets with parchment paper, or grease sheets.

In a heavy saucepan, combine 1/2 cup butter, water and salt over medium-high heat. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low. Pour in flour all at once and stir vigorously until fully incorporated and mixture forms a ball. Remove from heat, let rest 5 minutes. Then beat in eggs, one at a time, until well combined. (I do this part in my stand mixer). You know you are done when the dough has a satin-like sheen.

Add dough to large zip lock or pastry bag and cut slit at end about 1/2" wide. Pipe dough onto sheets in little strips about 2.5" long. (Keep them about 3/4" away from eachother).This may take a bit of practice. They will look similar to those marshmallow peeps at this point. After you have piped all the dough out, wet your finger and smooth down any pointy parts.

Bake in preheated oven 25-30 minutes, until golden. Remove from oven and let cool.

Prepare icing while eclairs are cooling. Heat 2 tablespoons butter with chocolate in a double boiler saucepan over medium heat, stirring until melted. If you don't have a double boiler, take a small sauce pan and fill with a few cups of water. Place a metal bowl on top and put ingredients inside) Sift in confectioners' sugar and 2 tablespoons water. Keep warm over low heat.

Fold cool whip in to chilled pudding

To assemble: with a pastry filler (or pastry bag/zip lock) fill the eclairs with pudding mixture as though they were jelly donuts. Then dip the tops in the warm chocolate. Chill in fridge until chocolate has set.

Next, mix about 1/4 cup powdered sugar witha few drops of water in a zip lock bag. Tweak until you get a consistency you like. Cut a tiny slit it the ziplock and pipe white icing laces on to top.

Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Serve.