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Hey, Foodie Folks! Colleen here again. I wanted to share with you a quick, fun, and relatively simple (and delicious!) dessert recipe I made over the long holiday weekend. As a bonus, it can be gluten-free! I discovered this Eclair Cake recipe on http://www.chef-in-training.com/ last week, when I started looking for a dessert dish to bring for my family’s Labor Day cookout. How could I not try this recipe out?

Lucikly, the recipe was pretty easy to modify for gluten-free eaters and tasted like the “real” thing. The one thing I’d recommend, while it’s not necessary, is to use a hand mixer (if you have one) for mixing the dough. I don’t own one at the moment, unfortunately, so I used my trusty ol’ rubber spatula and gun-show-like arm muscles to mix the dough. Luckily, it turned out fine!

What you’ll need for this recipe is:

For the Crust

- 1 cup water

-1/2 cup or 1 stick of butter or margarine (I say you only live once so use real butter. But, it’s your preference.)

- 1 cup flour *Gluten-Free Modification = use 1 cup of gluten-free all purpose flour*

- 1 tsp sugar

- 4 eggs

- 1 tsp vanilla *Gluten-Free Modification = be sure to use gluten- free vanilla*

For the Filling

- 1 (3.4-oz) box French vanilla pudding mix

- 2 cups of milk

- 6 oz of whipped topping (almost all of an 8-oz container)

For the Topping

- Spoonful of whipped topping

- Chocolate syrup

Materials

- Hand mixer (OR rubber spatula and strong arms)

- Small-Medium Pot/Pan

- Greased 9”x13” pan or jelly roll pan

- Whisk

-Large mixing bowl

And then, what you have to do is:

1.)   Preheat the oven to 400°F.

2.)   In a small-medium pot/pan, bring the water and butter to a boil. *Tip - cut your stick of butter in about 6 pieces and it melts faster/smoother.

3.)   Once the butter has melted into the water, remove the pan from the heat.

4.)   Using your hand mixer (or rubber spatula and arms of a Greek god/goddess), mix in the flour and sugar.

5.)   Beat the eggs into the mixture one at a time and then add the vanilla.

6.)   Spread the batter into the prepared pan.

7.)   Bake for 25 minutes *Note: Your cake will not look smooth or even in any sense and that’s okay. See mine below!*

8.)   While the cake is baking, whisk together the instant pudding and milk in a bowl and let it sit for a moment before mixing in the whipped topping.

9.)   Spread the filling over the cake (after it has completely cooled) and top with the leftover whipped topping and chocolate syrup.

Now, I had some time before the get-together and didn’t want the cake to get soggy under the toppings/fillings, so my presentation looked a little different. I kept the layers all separate (cake, filling, and topping) until it was serving time and then assembled each piece before serving. This worked out really well and allowed the cake portion to remain firmer than it would have otherwise. It also allowed for some tasty leftovers the next day. J

That’s it, foodie folks! I hope you find this recipe as tasty, quick, and easy as I did. (I also appreciated how cost-conscious it was!) Enjoy!

-Foodie Friend Colleen-