Hi Barbara, we haven’t tested a chocolate version of our pastry cream, and it would definitely take some tinkering to determine best amounts and whether cocoa powder or melted baking chocolate would work best. For a chocolate filling, we recommend using the chocolate mousse from this dark chocolate mousse cake —it’s excellent paired with these eclairs!

Hi Isabella, they are going to deflate a bit; that is normal. But I wonder if yours were under-baked?

Hi Terry, That Boston Cream Pie recipe is from America’s Test Kitchen cookbook. In our own testing, the recipe here for pastry cream produces pretty much the same results in terms of thickness and stability, so you can use them interchangeably.

Hi Sonja, about 3 to 4 inches long.