Eclair Cake
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This Eclair Cake is the perfect crowd dessert. Top it with a delicious homemade chocolate sauce and your guests will be begging you for the recipe!
Homemade Eclair Cake Recipe
Any of my “baking skills” that I may have been blessed with has come strictly from my mom. We have a running joke in our family where we call my mom “Betty Crocker” because my mom makes everything from scratch and it always tastes delicious! For family gatherings and nights with friends my mom would often make this eclair cake recipe and it was always a favorite with everyone and feeds plenty of people. The fluffy eclair crust is the perfect base for the pudding and whipped topping. Make sure you top it with some of my homemade chocolate sauce and your company will be begging for more! 🙂
Tips for making the perfect Eclair Crust:
- You will need to melt your butter and water together, make sure it is rapidly bowling before you remove from the heat.
- Remove boiling butter mixture and pour a small amount in a medium size bowl. With a hand mixture mix in some of your flour and beat in eggs one at a time. You want the batter to be smooth.
- Grease your baking pan before adding the batter to be sure it slides off easily when finished baking.
- Don’t have time to make our homemade chocolate sauce? Any one of your favorite store bought chocolate sauces will work just fine!
- When it’s baking, the eggs in the mixture makes the crust become a beautiful golden brown with the perfect amount of fluff.
- After it’s baking you may have a few air holes or places where the crust is very lumpy, while the crust is warm just push them down 🙂 It’s okay if they break a little bit. It’s a crust that is perfectly imperfect.
How to make Eclair Cake
- Boil water and butter together (must be rapidly boiling) Remove from heat.
- Pour the water and butter mixture into a medium bowl, working quickly and with an electric hand mixer, whisk in flour and eggs, beating eggs in one at a time. The batter should be smooth. Spread on a greased jelly roll pan
- Bake at 400 degrees until light golden brown, approximately 20 minutes in a 17 1/2 x 11 inch baking pan or 30 minutes in an 8 x 11 inch pan.
- Prepare pudding by adding milk. Whip in softened cream cheese, Spread over cooled, puffed layer.
- Top with Cool Whip and drizzle with chocolate sauce. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours before serving.
To really dress up the dessert we love to add a pretty drizzle of chocolate sauce on the top. It adds a decadent look and the semi-sweet chocolate helps break up the vanilla taste.
For more dessert ideas you should try these:
Eclair Cake Recipe:
Eclair Cake
Ingredients
CRUST
- 1 cup water
- 1/2 cup butter
- 4 eggs
- 1 cup flour
PUDDING
- 1 large box instant vanilla pudding (you can also substitute 2 small boxes and use 3 cups of milk)
- 2 1/2 cups milk
- 1 (8 ounce) cream cheese, softened
- 8 ounces Whipped Topping , we use Cool Whip
- Homemade Chocolate Sauce or Hersheys Syrup
Instructions
- Boil water and butter together (must be rapidly boiling) Remove from heat.
- Pour the water and butter mixture into a medium bowl, working quickly and with an electric hand mixer, whisk in flour and eggs, beating eggs in one at a time. The batter should be smooth. Spread on a greased jelly roll pan
- Bake at 400 degrees until light golden brown, approximately 20 minutes in a 17 1/2 x 11 inch pan or 30 minutes in an 8 x 11 inch pan.
- Prepare pudding by adding milk. Whip in cream cheese, Spread over cooled, puffed layer.
- Top with Cool Whip and drizzle with chocolate sauce. Refrigerate for 2-4 hours before serving.
Video
This cake is delicious. I love the light texture of the crust. It can also be varied with pudding flavors. Everyone loves when I make this cake.
Thank you Katie for sharing the recipe.
Thank you for this recipe. Very good. I used a 15x 10 inch pan. It’s going in my keeper book. 🙂
This is my favorite dessert ever!
Eclairs are my favorite and this cake is fantastic!
This looks so amazing!! I love eclairs, so this is great! 🙂 🙂
This an amazing cake recipe. I love exclairs but this is so much easier. The chocolate really does make the recipe!!
This is my favorite cake ever! So easy and delicious.
This cake is amazing! Perfectly light and fluffy. Yum!
Made this last night for dessert and it turned out fantastic!
This right here is dangerous! Such a decadent cake, impossible to eat just one piece.
Definitely a crowd pleasing dessert!
My family loves this recipe ❤️
going to try this with a 13 x 9″ baking dish, hoping it works out
Ive done it several times! Noooo problem!!! I go up the sides with it cuz i csnt get enough of the crust
Would melted chocolate work instead of chocolate syrup?
Ive used the chocolate disc u melt in microwave for fruit that hardens an it’s great…i actually like the change in texture
I spread crust dough in an oval. bake. Once cooled, cut crust length wise, (so you have top/bottom). Then folded cool whip into pudding mixture. Spread mixture on bottom half of crust, set top half on top, then drizzled choc syrup. Your own cake size eaclair!
can I use butter instead of margarine?
Hey Bonnie! Yes, I actually recently made this recipe and prefer the butter! I made the change in my recipe card 🙂
Yes of course! Butter is better especially when preparing a basic cream puff mixture!
Would you give the recommended number of reasonable-sized servings for this, please?
Can you freeze this
This sounds amazing!