My First Daring Bakers Challenge: Eclairs

I'm pretty sure that the title of this post has given this week's baking surprise away. I joined the Daring Bakers last month and my first challenge with them was making eclairs. I have to say that I am happy to have made them as I can now add the experience to my baking repertoire. The whole recipe from start to finish took about 4 hours to make including cooling. I chose to fill my eclairs with home-made vanilla bean pastry cream (which was delicious, yum!). As much as I liked the pastry cream, I think if I were to make eclairs again I would just fill them with fresh whipped cream as the pastry cream is quite time consuming.

So here's my end result:

Also, last weekend I was asked by someone I know if I could make a birthday cake for them to bring to a friend and I gladly obliged. The cake I chose to make was a two layer chocolate devil's food with raspberry vanilla bean buttercream icing. I spread raspberry conserve and some of the buttercream between the layers and topped the cake with fresh organic raspberries. It smelt lovely and I was told that it tasted lovely.

On a final note, my best bud Emma bought a new car on Tuesday and I thought I would just share a photo of her new baby:

I almost forgot...I start my course at uni on Monday. I'm studying to become a nurse!