This is my PASTRY CREAM recipe, which I consider truly perfect and suitable for use in any of your recipes.
This cream, in fact, is thick, shiny and velvety on the palate; ideal for filling pastries and cakes without dripping and at the same time excellent to enjoy ‘by the spoon‘, as for example in trifle.
During the recipe reading, you will find all my ‘tricks’ to make your pastry cream at its best. You will be helped by both the step-by-step photos and the video; you absolutely can’t go wrong 😉
What do you say, shall we start right away with the list of ingredients? Follow me!
- Difficulty: Easy
- Cost: Very economical
- Preparation time: 5 Minutes
- Cooking methods: Oven
- Cuisine: Italian
- Seasonality: All seasons
Ingredients to make PASTRY CREAM
- 2 cups milk (preferably whole)
- 4 egg yolks (from medium eggs)
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/3 cup cornstarch
- 3 tbsps all-purpose flour
- Half lemon (organic, the zest)
- 1 pod vanilla (additional or as a substitute for lemon)
Tools to make PASTRY CREAM
- 1 Whisk
Steps to prepare PASTRY CREAM
Separate the yolks from the whites and pour them into a saucepan large enough, as this is what you will put on the fire.
Add the sugar and mix vigorously with a whisk, until you have obtained a homogeneous mixture.
Now pour in the cornstarch and give it an initial mix.
Finally, add the flour, and mix always quite vigorously until you obtain a homogeneous and especially shiny mixture.
Here you see what the mixture should look like before adding the milk.
Pour the milk into a saucepan, put it on the fire and add the lemon zest and, if you wish, the seeds of a vanilla pod. Bring the milk to a near boil, then turn off the heat.
At this point, pour a splash of hot milk into the pot (make sure it’s just a splash, otherwise the egg will start to cook) and mix well.
Once this is done, you can pour the remaining milk all at once, always mixing very well and – I recommend – checking with a spoon if you have mixed well at the bottom.
Bring the pot to the fire, on medium-high heat, and start stirring constantly with the whisk, for about five minutes. I usually, as soon as I see the cream beginning to thicken, lower the heat to the minimum to avoid it thickening too quickly and starting to burn at the bottom.
When you notice that the cream starts to boil, turn off the heat and pour it immediately into a glass bowl to stop the cooking.
To speed up the cooling of the cream and at the same time obtain a smooth and very shiny cream, I recommend mixing it from time to time until completely cooled.
To be precise, in the first minutes of cooling I mix with the whisk, while when it’s already lukewarm a spoon will suffice.
And here is your PASTRY CREAM ready, perfect for any of your recipes.
It is impeccable for filling cannoli, profiteroles, and zeppole, or any desserts where a cream that does not drip is required.
Tips and Storage
– You can transform your classic pastry cream into chocolate pastry cream, simply by adding unsweetened cocoa powder when it is still hot, adding a tablespoon at a time and mixing with the whisk until you reach a more or less intense cocoa flavor depending on your taste.
– If you want to obtain a cream that is a little less dense than this, just reduce the amount of flour; you can try, for example, to reduce it by 10 g.
– The pastry cream keeps in the refrigerator for a couple of days, covered with plastic wrap.
– The pastry cream keeps in the refrigerator for a couple of days, covered with plastic wrap.
If you enjoyed this recipe, you might also be interested in the CHOCOLATE CAKE WITH PEAR CREAM, the CANNOLI WITH CAMY CREAM and the CARROT CAKE WITH PISTACHIO PASTRY CREAM
