We had actually made some vegan honey a while ago and it had just been sitting in our fridge ever since. It took us a while to think of a way to incorporate it into a recipe. But these vegan honey and yogurt eclairs turned out to be such a tasty way to make use of the vegan honey. The tang from the yogurt in the pastry cream and the sweet hints of apple from the honey are just awesome. We recommend making the vegan honey a day in advance, so it can fully cool and thicken. We also use this vegan honey recipe in our vegan honey lemon cake.
The yogurt we use is Silk vanilla yogurt. These vegan honey and yogurt eclairs are just a variation on our vegan pastry cream and vegan eclair recipes.
Vegan Honey and Yogurt Eclairs
Sweet eclairs filled with tangy yogurt pastry cream and topped with vegan honey and almonds.
Ingredients
Vegan Honey
- 2 cups apple cider
- 1 cup sugar
- lemon extract or lemon juice (optional but recommended)
Vegan Yogurt Pastry Cream
- 1 cup unsweetened soy milk
- ½ cup vegan vanilla yogurt (¼ cup to boil in the milk, and another ¼ cup to mix in afterwards with the butter)
- 2 tsp vanilla extract
- pinch of salt (omit if using salted butter)
- 2 tbsp cornstarch
- ¼ cup sugar
- ⅓ cup Just Egg
- 3 tbsp vegan butter
Vegan Choux Dough
- ¼ cup water
- ¼ cup unsweetened soy milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract (optional)
- ½ tbsp sugar
- 3 tbsp vegan butter
- ½ cup all-purpose flour
- ½ cup Just Egg
- ¼ cup unsweetened soy milk (to mix with the Just Egg)
Garnish
- ¼ cup almond slices (estimated amount)
Instructions
Make the vegan honey the day before.
- Mix the apple cider, sugar, and a few drops of lemon extract in a saucepan. You can also use a few teaspoons of lemon juice if you have other uses for the rest of the lemon. Cook on medium heat until it reaches a thick consistency. This can take a while… The final consistency will be thicker once it cools down. We store ours in the fridge.
Make the yogurt pastry cream.
- As always, prepare this first. Place a medium or large sieve over a mixing bowl. Set aside the butter in one tablespoon pieces.
- Add the soy milk, ¼ cup vanilla yogurt, vanilla extract, and pinch of salt to a small sauce pan. Mix to combine and leave to simmer on medium heat. It will simmer pretty quickly, in only a few minutes.
- In a small or medium-sized mixing bowl, combine the sugar, cornstarch, and Just Egg.
- Mix with a whisk until evenly combined.
- Once the milk mixture has started to simmer, slowly whisk in half of it into the Just Egg mixture.
- Next, slowly whisk in all of the mixture from the mixing bowl back into the pot with the remaining milk mixture. Whisk continuously on medium heat to cook and thicken the mixture. It should be thick enough to see the streaks of the whisk in it.
- Turn off the heat. Scoop the mixture from the pot into the sieve you prepared earlier. Using a rubber spatula, press it through the sieve to get rid of any lumps in the mix. Don’t forget to scrape the outside bottom of the sieve to get any of the mix that collects there.
- Mix in one tablespoon of butter at a time while the mixture is still warm. The butter should melt and incorporate into the pastry cream. Then add in the remaining ¼ cup of yogurt.
- Place the pastry cream into a piping bag with a small narrow tip. Allow it to cool in the fridge while you make the eclairs.
Toast the almonds.
- Preheat the oven to 350°F. Lay the almond slices out in a single layer on a baking sheet and toast for only a few minutes until lightly browned. Once cooled, you can just crush them up with your fingers or some other utensil.
Make the choux dough.
- Prepare and gather the ingredients for the choux pastry. Using the second listed amount of soy milk, mix it together with the Just Egg. Set aside for later.
- Combine the water, soy milk, vanilla extract, sugar, and butter in a small saucepan on medium heat. Mix it with a rubber spatula until the butter dissolves and then leave it for a few minutes until it starts to simmer. For a nice sweet aroma, we like adding a couple teaspoons of vanilla to the milk. This makes the dough smell really nice while it bakes.
- Once the liquid ingredients begin to simmer, carefully add in all the flour. Turn the heat to low. Continue to mix until the flour is incorporated and no white flour spots remain. The mix will thicken into a dough and almost form a ball. It should come off the sides of the pan easily. This shouldn’t take more than about 3 minutes.
- Scoop the dough out of the pan and into a mixing bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer. Avoid using a plastic bowl as the dough will be hot. Smash the dough down and flatten it to help release the heat. Leave it to cool for a few minutes. Alternatively, you can mix the dough over some ice or some ice packs to help it cool more quickly. You can also mix the dough for a few minutes in a stand mixer with a paddle attachment.
- Once your dough is just barely warm or room temperature, add in the Just Egg mixture a few tablespoons at a time. The amount is up to you. We’re just trying to avoid mixing a ball of dough sitting in egg soup—that would be more difficult to mix! Mix it with the rubber spatula and allow it to fully incorporate in between each addition. The final consistency should just barely run off the spatula and look pipe-able. Add more soy milk a tablespoon at a time if your mixture is still too thick.
- Preheat the oven to 400° F.
Prepare the baking tray.
- Line a half sheet tray with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat. If using parchment paper, you can pipe or dab a small amount of the choux mixture onto each corner of the baking tray underneath the paper. This will help keep the paper from sliding around as you pipe.
- Scoop the choux mixture into a piping bag with a 1/2 inch opening or smooth tip.
- You can close the narrow end of the bag towards the tip with a tie.
- And then place it inside of a tall glass. This makes it a bit easier to fill the bag.
- Keeping the tip very close to the tray, squeeze continuously and pipe a strip of the mixture approximately 4 inches long. It should also be about 1 inch wide.NOTE: Pipe slowly! If you pipe too quickly, you're going to make a thin strip of dough!
- Pipe a second strip of dough on top of the first one. This vegan choux recipe doesn't puff up the same way as non-vegan versions do. So the two layers help give the eclairs some extra height. There should be enough mixture to make about 10 eclairs.
- Wet the tip of your finger and gently flatten the little pointy tips that form on the ends from piping.
Bake.
- Place the tray in the oven on the middle rack. Bake for 40-45 minutes until completely deep golden brown. Do not open the oven at all until the last few minutes of baking. The pastry needs consistent heat for the moisture to turn to steam and cause them to rise. You can check on their color in the final few minutes of baking.NOTE: Bake for closer to 45 minutes for a more hollow center and crisper outside. This is what they looked like about halfway through baking.
- Once the eclairs are the desired color, turn off the oven. Leave the tray in for about 10 minutes. Keep the oven door slightly open to allow the eclairs to continue to dry out while slightly cooling.
- Remove the tray from the oven. The eclairs will still be warm. I use a metal skewer first to make three small holes spaced evenly along the bottom of each eclair to allow any remaining steam to escape. Then use a small sharp knife to make the holes a little bit wider by rotating the knife after inserting the tip into each hole. The eclairs can deflate if left to continue cooling without making the holes.
- Grab the piping bag with pastry cream that is resting in the refrigerator. Insert the tip of the piping bag into one of the holes on the bottom of the eclair. Carefully squeeze the pastry cream into the eclair. You will feel the cream push back a bit when you’ve filled each hole with enough of the pastry cream. Wipe off any excess cream from the hole. Repeat on each of the three holes on all of the eclairs.
Final Assembly.
- Using a small spoon, coat the top of each eclair with some of the vegan honey. Use only a tiny bit at first, you can always add more later. If you use too much, the honey will run down the sides of the eclairs.
- Next, sprinkle some crushed almonds over the tops of the eclairs so that they stick to the honey.
- We like to eat them after refrigerating them for a few minutes, but of course you can eat them however you'd like to.
That looks amazing! 🙂 Thanks for sharing the recipe, will definitely give it a try.
Let us know how it goes! We love to see people using our recipes.