Éclairs: Cupcake, You’ve Met Your Match

One of my favorite childhood food memories is of selecting a pastry at the local bakery on snowy Saturday mornings. We'd stomp our boots, troop into the warm shop, and press our noses so close to the display case the glass would steam up. There were bear's claws and black and white cookies and little lemon tarts topped with fluted meringue, but my choice was always the same: a chocolate bathed éclair boated with oozing vanilla crème. Cupcakes, doughnuts, macarons, and most recently, cronuts, have all had their moment, but now the éclair is making a comeback. Less than a year ago, Parisian pastry chef Adam Cristophe, who earned his toque baking for the venerable Fauchon, opened a shop devoted to advancing a pastry that's been made essentially the same way since the 19th century-and its been packed ever since. The pastry never disappeared in Paris, nor in the United States, for that matter, but Cristophe's are a mad departure from the vanilla and chocolate standard. "An éclair has to taste good of course, but it's also very, very important for it to look beautiful," he told Slate, "To have that high-end, contemporary, modern quality." His pastries are topped with real violets, edible silver dust, and candy-colored racing stripes, to name a few of the 80-and-counting varieties. For now, you'll have to buy a plane ticket to sample one of Cristophe's creations, but he hopes to open more locations of his shop, L'Eclair de Génie (translation: "flash of genius") in Japan and New York City. -Sarah B. Weir, senior writer Shine