Éclair vs Maritozzi con la Panna (Sweet Buns with Cream)

Both desserts lean on the same vanilla-scented whipped cream sweetened with powdered sugar, but they frame it very differently. The éclair is built on choux pastry, where butter and eggs are cooked and beaten into a pipeable dough that bakes into a puffed, firm shell, filled from below and dipped in a rich dark chocolate glaze. Maritozzi instead knead butter and egg into a yeasted, orange-zested dough that proofs into a bread-like bun, split open and generously stuffed so the cream stays front and centre.