Chocolate eclairs

These, to my mind, are like Crème Brûlée: properly made, they are unbeatable. But crusty, stale, soggy, or filled with fake cream, chocolate cream or slightly sour cream, I would rather eat a bowl of bread and butter. The chocolate on top, in my view, needs to be a fondant, not hard; the cream should be double. Eclairs should burst their contents into your mouth, like the streak of lightning after which they are named.

My great great aunt, Sadie Bonnell, lived to 105 and I last saw her on her hundredth birthday. But it is her ninetieth birthday that I have in mind, and it is that day which the photograph below, taken in June 1978, shows. My mother made ninety miniature chocolate eclairs for her birthday tea. Years later, she wondered, half-jokingly, why she had bothered: the two did not enjoy a warm relationship. “Auntie Da” she was known as: short, apparently, for “Sadie Darling”. A real misnomer, said my mother, who told the story of a Boxing Day lunch to which Auntie Da had been invited: “She looked at my lovely cold collation and said there was nothing there that she could eat. I offered to make her some soup and she said I wouldn’t be able to make anything acceptable so quickly. I nipped into the kitchen and knocked up some turkey and vegetable broth, which she guzzled, and then went to the cold collation, previously rejected, and stuffed her face there too!”

I recall another occasion when I must have been aged about nine or ten. We were staying with my grandparents and Auntie Da had come to stay. I did not fully comprehend at the time just how much tension her presence caused – although I enjoyed observing the ructions. They usually came accompanied with soft rumbling from my grandfather - “Auntie!” - when she went too far. One came over supper, when Granny brought in pudding: sliced peaches. Auntie wasn’t happy with her helping as it came with cream, and she demanded one without. Granny whipped the rejected bowl off Auntie’s table mat and stalked back into the kitchen muttering something like, “Well that’s great!” The next evening there were more sliced peaches available and Auntie was asked whether she would like any. She would, “but it’s really just an excuse to have some cream”, she said. I found it hard not to giggle.

The most infamous story of all comes from the nineteen sixties when she was living with her niece, Irene, and Irene’s husband, Bill. The final straw was at a meal when Irene served up Brussels sprouts and Auntie leaned over, grabbed one, and squeezed it over the serving dish, commenting that it hadn’t been properly drained. That was the last straw and she went to live in a home in Droitwich, where she lived out her remaining thirty or so years.