your answer may be determined by where you grew up. i was having a discussion with a friend about, of all things, the movie Sliver (Sharon Stone, 1993). there is a scene featuring the object posted above in which the characters refer to it as an ‘eclair’. my friend (who grew up in the Southwest) objected to the designation, whereas i (growing up in and around NYC) did not. she rightly pointed out that, what it was in her parlance, was a ‘long john’. a term i’ve never heard of. it does seem that the word eclair is doing double duty in the Northeast, both referring to the traditional French pastry, a baked cream filled Pate a choux and the ‘long john’ a yeast based dough that is fried. regional variations in language always fascinate me.
from your place in the world, what would you call it?
An eclair is made using pâte à choux. What’s pictured is either a “long john” or a “chocolate bar doughnut” (even when filled, I sometimes see them called that) and is made from raised dough.
If made of yeasted, fried dough, I would refer to it as a chocolate bar, since maple frosted ones are maple bars. In Hawaii, it would probably be a malasada, though it likely wouldn’t be that shape. If made of pate a choux and baked, definitely a chocolate eclair.
Not an eclair to me who grew up in the PNW of the U.S. with midwestern parents, but you made me smile with “long john.” My parents always said that, and I haven’t heard it in decades. We have a very popular doughnut shop by my house in California; next time I will ask the owners if people ever use the term. I’ve only heard “bar” or “filled bar” here.
Agree with others that eclairs are not doughnuts and doughnuts are not eclairs, whatever common shape, glaze, and filling they may have. French crullers are doughnuts made from pâte a choux, however.
Doughnut regionalisms are fascinating to me. Like, ask people what a cruller is, and their answer depends on where they are. (As a Californian, I only know from the French cruller, not any of the various long doughnut shapes that go by that term elsewhere.) And why, oh why, are there no old fashioneds on the east coast?
Not convinced it is an eclair as those would have a uniform colour all over the pictured object show a clear line along its side reminiscent of a doughnout. It also looks doughy rather than chouxy. Therefore I declare it a (n oblong) doughnut with a chocolate topping.
West coast born and raised. Refugee to the RM west. What is pictured appears to me to be a chocolate glazed pastry bar. A chocolate eclair would show the center split and pastry cream or whipped cream piped in and it would be sitting in a pretty paper liner. Long John? Is that similar to a Slim Jim?
i had never heard it. seems to originate in the Midwest. however, my friend from the Southwest new the designation very well (although her mother is originally from Indiana).
looks like there is a rough pattern in the language used to describe this:
Bar = West coast
Eclair = East coast?, or probably Northeast
I’m STILL going through the volumes of recipe clippings I started purging during the pandemic. Today I found a recipe for ’ Long Johns’. It looks like a yeasted pastry, 2" x 3" and fried with a glazed topping and so similar to the bars I see in the pastry displays around here. I’m still partial to the real ‘chocolate eclair’.
