Vanilla Pastry Cream
For the longest of times I would avoid making vanilla pastry cream, but after recently experimenting with choux pastry, choux a la creme and eclairs, I felt like it was time to give pastry cream another chance. I used to find it too thick and dense in the past, but this recipe turn my world upside down so to speak and I rediscovered what’s said to be the most basic of the cremes used in the pastry kitchen.
Pastry cream, also known as creme patisserie, is prepared with milk, eggs and sugar and it uses either flour or cornstarch as the binding agent, depending on the degree of lightness desired. The flavorings can include vanilla, rum or Cointreau, but also chocolate or coffee. The recipe below is an adaptation after the recipe provided by the Le Cordon Bleu pastry book. They prefer using a mix of flour and cornstarch and I find this to be my desired lightness – the cream is smooth, not too dense and it melts in your mouth when you eat it. It’s also a great base for other creams used in the pastry kitchens, but more on that in a future blog post.
Vanilla Pastry Cream
Ingredients
- 1000 ml whole milk
- 125 g white sugar
- 6 egg yolks
- 2 eggs
- 125 g white sugar
- 60 g all-purpose flour
- 20 g cornstarch
- 1 pinch salt
- 1 vanilla bean (split in half lengthwise or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract)
Instructions
- Start by combining the milk and 125g sugar in a saucepan. If using vanilla bean, add it to the milk at this point. Bring to the boiling point over low to medium flame.
- In the meantime, mix the egg yolks, eggs and the remaining sugar in a bowl until pale and double in volume.
- Stir in the flour, cornstarch and salt and mix well then pour in the hot milk, mixing while doing so to prevent the eggs from curdling.
- Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and place back over heat.
- Cook, whisking all the time, until the mixture becomes to thicken. Ideally, you should cook the pastry cream for 1-2 minutes to make sure the flour is cooked through. The cream will go through various stages of stiffness. At first, it will set quickly, then it will soften as you boil it and set again. To test if it’s ready, dip the tip of a cold knife into the cream then allow it to cool down. If you can remove the cream off the knife without leaving traces of cream on the blade of the knife, the cream is ready.
- Remove from heat and cover the cream with plastic wrap on its surface.
- Allow to cool down completely before adding the vanilla extract.
Notes
For the coffee version, stir 4 teaspoons of instant coffee in the hot milk.
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