Pastry Cream (Creme Patisserie)

Pastry Cream

I think this recipe is by far one of my favorites to make, and if you like to bake, it is absolutely one to master. And it requires learning one of the core skills of pastry; tempering eggs.

Creme patisserie is a master recipe you will see many times in just about any form of baking and pastry. It is the essential filling for fruit tarts, a lovely and luscious filling for cakes, for breakfast pastries, doughnuts, cream puffs and the mythical Tarte Tropozienne.

This recipe is the perfect happy medium for my liking and slightly borrowed from several recipes I’ve used over years, tinkered with until it was just right. I love the flavor and mouth feel of using flour for a thickener, but also I love the silkiness of cornstarch, so I’ve used both as Nancy Silverton does in her recipe in Pastries From The La Brea Bakery.

If you don’t have vanilla bean, don’t worry, a good quality pure extract will work. For that matter, pastry cream is essentially a blank slate; you can flavor it with anything you like. If you want chocolate pastry cream, omit the butter and stir in 3 ounces of chopped chocolate at the end.

Pastry Cream (Creme Patisserie)

Yield: About 1 3/4 cups

Time: 20 minutes

Equipment: 4 quart saucepan, whisk, fine mesh sieve, spatula

Ingredients:

4 egg yolks

1/3 cup/50 grams granulated sugar

1 Tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons/ grams cornstarch

1 Tablespoon plus 1 1/2 teaspoons/ grams all purpose flour

1 1/2 cup/400 ml whole milk

1/2 vanilla bean

pinch of sea salt

1 Tablespoon unsalted butter, room temperature

Directions:

Place the egg yolks in a medium size mixing bowl. Place a wet kitchen towel underneath the bowl (this holds it in place while you are whisking and tempering).

Whisk the sugar into the egg yolks and whisk until they lighten a little (do not let the sugar sit on eggs unincorporated, it will “cook” the egg). Add the cornstarch and flour and whisk again until smooth.

Pour the milk into a heavy bottom saucepan. Split the vanilla bean to scrape out the seeds and add both the seeds and shell to the pan. Add the salt. Heat the milk on medium-high until just before it simmers, you will see little tiny bubbles at the edge of the milk.

Temper the egg yolks. Pour a slow, small stream of the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture while whisking at the same time to very slowly warm the egg yolks without curdling. Keep pouring the milk and whisking until all of the milk is in the bowl. Pour the contents of the bowl back into the pan and return the pan to the stove. Cook over medium-high heat, whisking constantly until the custard is very thick and begins to bubble.

Remove from the heat and whisk in the butter. Use a flexible spatula to press the pastry cream through a fine mesh sieve into a medium bowl (save the vanilla bean, wash it, let dry and then place in a jar of sugar to make vanilla sugar). Press a piece of plastic wrap or parchment paper to the surface of the pastry cream to prevent a skin from forming. Wrap and place in the refrigerator until cold, about 2 hours.

Pastry Cream will keep, well sealed, in the refrigerator for up to 4 days.