Brioche buns with chocolate pastry cream (translation from French recipe)

I wanted to make some chocolate eclairs for a friend who came for lunch yesterday but it seems I simply cannot make them in an electric oven... So I had to improvise and I looked on one of my favorite French website for ideas. I found the recipe of what we call a Chinois (Chinese) which is roughly a chocolate pastry cream rolled into a brioche pastry and cut into buns. It is simply delicious and so easy to make. The most difficult part is actually waiting for it to cool enough so you have some.

Mice looks very messy but to be honest once you have tasted it, you don't care. I had so much pastry cream and I didn't want to have any leftover so I covered the Brioche with the rest. I think this recipe also either calls for a bigger dish than the one I used or make 2 small ones.

So here is the recipe:
Ingredients (8 people):

400 g flour
1 ½ sachet of dry yeast
80 g of salted butter
100 ml lukewarm milk
20 g of sugar.
2 eggs
1 handful of chocolate chips

Preparation:

Mix the flour with yeast. Add the melted butter and sugar to the warm milk. Incorporate this mixture into the flour and mix it with the hands. Add then the beaten egg and then work the dough and knead it for about 10 min. Form a ball and then let the dough rise in a warm place for 1 hour. Once the dough has doubled in volume, spread it on a slightly floured plan. Spread the pastry cream everywhere even at the edges and corners. Wrap the dough on itself to form a large roll. Cut into 8 sections and then place them in a mould. Sprinkle some chocolate chips and let rise again. Bake in a hot oven for 30 minutes at 180 °.


Source: www.lesfoodies.com

For the chocolate pastry cream:

200 g of dark chocolate
20 g cocoa powder
20 g corn starch
110 g powdered sugar
4 egg yolks
60 cl of milk.


Vigorously mix powdered sugar and egg yolks in a bowl. Add the corn starch and cocoa powder and pour boiling milk on it.

Pour it in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring vigorously.

Out of the heat, add chocolate cut into squares and stir with a whisk until well smooth cream is obtained. Cool and pour the cream.

Just like any pastry cream or curds, you will need to apply a plastic film over the surface of it when it cools.

Source: www.lesfoodies.com