Valentine’s Day Lemon & Blackberry Eclairs

Here’s how to make these:
First, we’re going to mix up the pate a choux…or the dough for the eclair shells. In a small pot, pour in some water and a hunk of butter.
Bring this to a boil. This recipe may look fancy, but it calls for super simple ingredients and is actually quite simple. Keep scrolling and you’ll see what I mean.
Once that butter and water have come up to a bubble, sprinkle in some flour and stir it all up with a wooden spoon.
Everything should get mixed together and become really thick. Cook this maybe for a minute over medium-low heat. 
Remove the pot from the burner and sprinkle in some salt.

Wait a few minutes until the pot has cooled a little bit and stir in two eggs, one by one. {You don’t want to scramble these suckers right up because scrambled eggs in desserts=nasty city.}
You’re going to want to incorporate these eggs completely after each addition. The mixture will look slimy and weird, but that’s how it’s supposed to look.

After the second addition of the egg, stir it until the pate a choux is completely smooth. Then you can either pipe it out into hearts or spoon it onto a baking sheet. Bake these off first at 425 and then at 350. Oh and, press down any points with a quick dab. 
While those are baking away, we’ll make the fillings. Forage some blackberries in the woods. And by forage I mean buy. And by woods I mean Target.
Wash the blackberries and sprinkle some sugar over top. The amount of sugar will depend on how sweet the berries are. Taste one and decide from there. Oh and squeeze in some lemon juice too. {Pretend there’s a photo of that here too.}
Mush everything around and set it aside. The longer you let this sit, the more juice you will get. Juice=yum.
Pull out those cute hearts when they’re done and set them aside to cool. All of mine didn’t turn out this perfectly just fyi. If yours don’t all look this good, just don’t say a word and no one will know! 
Now for the lemon filling, I just threw everything into a mini chopper and whizzed it up until smooth. In here is sugar, softened cream cheese, lemon zest and cream.
After a few pulses and scrape downs, you should be done!
Now to assemble this all together, slice a heart in half and top with a heaping tablespoon of that lemon filling we just made.
Top that with some blackberries….
…and the top part of the heart…
and then some powdered sugar! How cute are these?
Happy Valentine’s Day, friends!! Hope you enjoy this one!
For all you chocolate lovers, here are some other treats you will LOVE: Molten Chocolate Lava Cakes, Double Chocolate Silk Cream Pie {aka the pie that got me married}, Nutella Topped Red Velvet Oreo Cheesecakes, Nutella Cream Pie,  Double Chocolate Cupcakes with Dark Chocolate Buttercream, Cookies n’ Cream Brownie Bars, Chocolate Truffle S’more Tart, Peanut Butter Brownie Cake and Heart Shaped Brownie Cheesecake Bites.
Valentine’s Day Lemon & Blackberry Eclairs
yield: about 24 small
 Print This Recipe
Ingredients:
for the pate a choux-
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup butter
1/2 cup all purpose flour
pinch of salt
2 large eggs
for the lemon cream cheese filling-
6 oz. softened cream cheese
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
1/2 lemon, zested
1/4 cup heavy cream
for the macerated blackberries-
12 oz. blackberries
1-3 tablespoons sugar {depending on how sweet the fruit is}
1/2 lemon, juiced
powdered sugar, for garnish if desired
Directions:
To make the pate a choux–Preheat oven to 425. Line baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. In a small pot, boil water and butter together. Slowly sprinkle in flour while mixing with a wooden spoon. Mixture will become very thick. Cook over low heat approximately 1 minute. Remove from heat and cool a few minutes. {You’re going to be stirring in eggs and you don’t want to cook them!} Stir in a pinch of salt and eggs, 1 at a time, incorporating completely after each egg addition. After the batter becomes smooth, spoon into piping bag {or large ziploc}. Pipe into 24 small heart shapes. Press any points of dough down with a wet finger. Bake for 10 minutes, then reduce temperature to 350 degrees and bake 18 minutes. Remove eclair shells from oven once they are golden brown and puffed. Set aside to cool.
For the lemon cream cheese filling- in a small bowl of a mini chopper, place cream cheese, sugar, lemon zest and cream. Blitz until smooth, scraping sides as you go. Mixture is done once there are no lumps. Set aside in fridge.
For the blackberries–place all ingredients into a small bowl. Stir and mash the berries until the desired consistency is reached. Let berries sit at least 30 minutes before serving.
To assemble–slice heart eclair shells open. Spread a heaping tablespoon of lemon filling onto the bottom and spoon over berries. Top with upper half and dust with powdered sugar