Delicious Pastry Cream
Miniature fruit tarts filled with raspberry sauce and pastry cream and topped with blueberries and orange
Pastry cream or créme pâtissèrie (sometimes lovingly called “créme pât”) is the base of a lot of your favorite tarts and danishes. You can place it in a piping bag and fill out the bottom of a pastry crust or even spread it flat in the fridge and use a cutter to slice discs out for various fillings. As it sits in the fridge it thickens, making it the perfect component for so many pastries.
This creamy deliciousness is also a great way to up your baking cred and impress your friends. When they ask: “What’s in this?” you can say: “Oh it’s créme pât at the base” and badabing badaboom you now look like a professional chef.
Without further adieu, get to adding this perfect cream to your baking tool belt.
Equipment:
Yields*: 1 cup of pastry cream
Ingredients:
250g (1 cup) whole milk
¼ tsp vanilla extract
50g (approx. ¼ cup) granulated sugar
50 g (little less than one) whole egg
12.5 g (2 tbsp) All Purpose flour
12.5g (2 ¼ tbsp) corn starch
25g (2-3 tbsp) unsalted butter, cubed
Directions:
In a medium pot, bring milk and vanilla up to a scald*.
In a bowl, whisk together your eggs and sugar for one minute.
Whisk your cornstarch and flour, into your egg/sugar mixture. Whisking for another minute until everything is incorporated.
Once you milk reaches scalding point, stream in ⅓ of liquid into your egg mixture, whisking constantly. Repeat with another third, whisk, and then the final third, until all is incorporated.
Rinse your pot with cold water* and wipe out any residue. Return all of the liquid from the bowl, back to the pot.
Over medium heat, use a whisk to constantly stir the mixture as it thickens.
Bring it to a boil and let boil for only one minute stirring continuously so it evenly thickens.
Remove the pot from the heat and drop in one cube of butter at a time, whisking each in before adding another piece. Repeat until all your butter is added.
Pour your pastry cream into a bowl and cover the surface of the cream with plastic wrap* before placing in the fridge for a few hours to cool completely.
Once cooled, it’s ready to use!
Notes:
This is a smaller batch version of créme pâtissèrie, feel free to double as needed!
Scalding point is when you see a rim of bubbles around the edge of your pot of liquid.
Rinsing your pot with cold water will help the pan to cool down quickly before you add the mixture back to the pot.
Make sure that the entire surface of the cream is cover in plastic wrap. This ensures that no skin forms on your pastry cream as it cools. Cause thats yuck.
I received this recipe from Chef Ashley during my patisserie course in Scotland.
Tag @accentgolden in your pastry cream posts. I want to see you master these basics!
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