Snippets from the Scullery: a recurring blog post

As many of you know I get great pleasure out of being in the kitchen. I love to cook and experiment with new recipes but more importantly enjoying the fellowship of friends. It only makes sense that I include "Snippets from the Scullery" in my blog!

In my first edition I'm featuring an eclair cake! Over the weekend Andrew invited several people over to enjoy the pool at his apartment and then have a cookout. I'm a bit ashamed to say this was my first time at a pool this season (except for the boat). Needless to say I enjoyed the chlorine and sun! Since I wasn't sure if Andrew would be able to pull off a whole cookout by himself, I volunteered to bring an eclair cake.

Eclair cakes seem to be very simple -- and they are. However I made one a couple of months and had a few stumbles so I set out to make eclair cake round 2 better!

Ingredients
3 c Skim Milk
8 oz Cool Whip
2 pks Instant Vanilla Pudding*
Graham Crackers
Chocolate Frosting/Sauce**

Directions
Combine pudding and milk, whisk for 2 minutes. Fold in cool whip.
Place a layer of graham crackers in a 9x13 dish. Then add half of the pudding/cool whip mixture. Add another layer of graham crackers and then the remaining pudding/cool whip mixture.
Finish the dessert with a layer of chocolate frosting/sauce and chill for a few hours.

Other Notes (*/**)
*The first time I made the eclair cake I used two packages of vanilla. This last time I used a package of vanilla and a package of cheesecake (just because I had the cheesecake in the pantry). I think the cheesecake added a nice flavor and would recommend this.
**The last time I made the eclair cake, the chocolate frosting posed some problems for me. Before I made the cake I did some research online for preparing the cake and there were a lot of different suggestions for the final chocolate layer. I decided to take the easy route and top it with store bought cake frosting from a tub. This was not a good idea. The frosting was heavier than the pudding mixture and didn't spread evenly over the top. I think I could have chilled the cake for a few hours and let it set. This may remedy that problem but for eclair cake round 2 I decided to try my hand at making Granny's delicious homemade chocolate sauce. I succeeded and topped the eclair cake with this. This turned out fabulous. Now I'm going to keep the chocolate sauce recipe in the family. If you'd like to go to the store bought chocolate frosting route I would also suggest softening the frosting before applying it to the cake.

Yum! Let me know your experiences with eclair cake!

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