- Hey bakers, John Kanell from Preppy Kitchen here,
and today, this one's for all the vanilla lovers out there,
we're making a cream pie full of vanilla bean,
speckled all over, just suspended in this amazing custard,
topped with whipped cream,
and it's all sitting in a flaky butter crust,
that just makes everything pop.
Let's get started!
This insanely delicious vanilla filling
is gonna go into an equally delicious butter pie crust,
no shortening for us, it'll be flaky, flavorful,
and just a little bit sweet, you're gonna love it.
The full recipe is on the blog,
the description has the link for that,
or you can click up here for my full how-to
on my easy, perfect, butter crust.
This was baked a few hours ago, it's nice and cool now,
I actually lifted it out of the pan,
but we're going to set it aside
and get started on that vanilla!
Let's talk about that vanilla bean.
This is the primary flavor we're gonna get in this pie.
So, let's use a nice one.
You don't have to use a vanilla bean,
you can use vanilla bean paste or vanilla extract,
but please, just for me,
don't use artificial vanilla, just don't.
If you don't want to use vanilla
or you can't get a hold of it, just add in a little bourbon,
or rum or some other flavoring, you'll enjoy it, I promise.
All right, so for this vanilla bean,
we're gonna split it length-wise,
so expensive for such an ugly thing, but it's delicious.
That's opening up the pod of our orchid.
Did you know that vanilla plants are orchids?
They are!
Scrape out all those seeds.
This pod is not garbage, don't you dare throw it away,
it's gonna be amazing if you just stick it
in your sugar bag, most of your grandmothers,
I think, did this, do it yourself too.
It's a good idea, it can make vanilla sugar.
We're gonna set our vanilla beans aside for a moment,
and let's separate the eggs.
The eggs are gonna provide some substance and richness
to this pie, so we're gonna use two whole eggs,
and two egg yolks.
Three, oh, wait a second.
(beep)
Two whole eggs, and two egg yolks.
There we go, that's better.
I was on autopilot, which is never
a good thing when you're baking.
Give it a whisk, and we're gonna set this aside.
This is gonna get tempered with our hot mixture
that we're about to start.
Here, I have a medium to large, heavy saucepan.
You want the saucepan to have nice, thick sides,
because it'll give you a nice, uniform heat.
If you have thin walls on your pans,
they become super hot and scorch your food.
Into my pan I'm adding one and a scant quarter,
basically, it's like one cup and three tablespoons.
I feel like that's the right amount of sweetness,
but, go ahead and add the extra little bit
for a full quarter cup, it's up to you.
Gonna add a pinch of salt.
A pinch, by the way, is how much you can hold,
so it's not like three grains.
Often times it translates into an eighth of a teaspoon.
Now I have a quarter cup or 40 grams, of cornstarch.
This is our thickening agent.
Whisk this up, and now it's time for three cups of milk.
I like to do whole milk.
Do any of you actually like skim milk?
It's like water, it has no taste.
Let me know in the comments what percent milk you like.
Whole milk, like me?
2%, which is like, meh, or skim,
which is like water someone put like
a little bit of food coloring in, in my opinion!
Ah!
And three cups.
Wasn't focusing on moving that very full cup.
I was thinking about how gross skim milk is.
Okay, we'll just, add the little bit extra I lost.
I lost over there.
We're gonna give this another whisk before we put it on heat
and, at the same time, let's add in
that delicious vanilla bean.
Looks like tar, but it's not.
And I love seeing those little flecks of vanilla
in any vanilla dessert, I tell ya.
It just really lets you know that, for sure,
someone's using natural ingredients,
and it's kinda luxurious too.
After this is all whisked up, we're gonna put it
onto medium-high heat, until it comes to a boil.
While whisking, you don't want
your milk to burn, that's gross.
While this is on medium-high heat,
we're just gonna keep it moving.
So, whisk whisk whisk, don't be crazy, but, you know,
you don't want things standing still,
especially because as the mixture warms up,
the bottom will begin cooking first
and when you see it thickening,
it's time to whisk pretty hard.
(funky music)
All right, once it begins thickening up and boiling,
you're gonna reduce it to medium,
and then continue this for six more minutes or so.
There are a few flecks of like,
the larger vanilla bean pod that got scraped.
I don't care about that, you can strain the mixture
if you want it to be unmarred by any bit of plant material.
It's up to you.
I don't think I'm gonna strain them,
I might pick a few out if I see them.
That's thickened up nicely, it's time to temper the eggs.
So, you're gonna grab a cup of this mixture.
Be careful, because it's very hot,
and, we're going to very slowly drizzle it into the eggs
while we whisk whisk whisk whisk whisk.
This is warming up the eggs in a controlled fashion,
so they don't become scrambled eggs, but instead a custard.
Once you've tempered your eggs,
you can add them back into your mixture while you whisk.
Make sure you get everything out of there.
Now we can set a timer on for two minutes,
go back to a medium, medium-high, and whisk.
These eggs need to cook.
Two minutes, take it off the heat.
And now we're gonna stir in our butter.
Last step is to add in your
one, two, three, four tablespoons of butter,
and just stir it, it'll cool your mixture down a bit,
and it'll get this wonderful, silky texture.
It's just hard to beat.
You know, it's butter.
If you're using vanilla bean extract,
or vanilla bean paste, you would add it in right now,
you don't wanna, like, kind of, denature
and change the flavor of the vanilla
by heating it excessively.
Ooh, wonderful, silky, beautiful mixture,
with all those vanilla beans inside, it's lovely.
Right now you can transfer the mixture to a bowl.
Let it cool down just a bit before
you add it to the pie shell.
Room temperature would be great.
But, in a pinch, you can, you could
just add it in right now, but don't!
Don't do that.
If it's too warm it'll make the pie crust soggy.
I think that's the issue.
Cover with plastic so it touches the surface,
and then we're going to dump this into our pie crust,
once ready, we'll be back in a second.
And I'm back!
Okay, anyway, funny story,
I lost the glass container for this.
I don't know where it went,
I had four, and now I have three.
Today's pie day, so I'm shooting a ton of pies,
and something happened, but, it's okay.
This is actually fairly strong and I'll be gentle.
Gonna take one spoonful for me to test in a second,
and we're just going to place this on here.
This stuff is the business, oh my gosh, it is delicious!
Don't worry if this doesn't look perfectly flat on top,
we're gonna cover this in whipped cream,
and you'll be in heaven.
But, for now, let's just give it, like, a rough smooth.
Roughly smoothing over and over until it's perfectly smooth.
I don't know why, I can't help myself.
This will set in the fridge for a few hours to overnight.
I actually have a swap-out, however, I'm gonna warn you,
for the swap-out, I used plain old just vanilla extract,
so you don't have all the beautiful dots.
Very conflicted about this.
All right, let's put this in the fridge,
whip up some cream, and wow, this is good!
Two cups of cold heavy whipping cream
into the bowl of your stand mixer,
you can use powdered sugar or granulated sugar.
I actually prefer powdered sugar
because it has some cornstarch in it,
and that helps to stabilize the whipped cream a bit.
So it's gonna be a quarter of a cup.
We're gonna whip this up, start on low, move to high.
You might wanna cover it up because it will splatter on you.
(peppy music)
So, let's take a look and see where we're at.
This is just about done, you could add
a little bit more whipping in there,
but what we're gonna do is flavor this,
and I will use the standard and classic vanilla.
I'm adding in about a teaspoon and change.
(peppy music)
All right, I mixed it for maybe like ten seconds extra,
and that is as firm as I wanna go.
This is on the firmer side,
and if you keep whipping it, it's gonna curdle,
so this is as close as you wanna go,
and it's also good for piping.
I'm using a large, closed star tip to pipe
some beautiful little rosettes.
You could just throw that whipped cream on top,
make a big mountain, it will still be delicious,
and, also, still beautiful.
I don't know if I said this, but vanilla custard
is one of my very most favorite things to eat.
See my chocolate eclair video where I lose my mind.
It's so good.
If you love eclairs, if you love pastry cream,
if you love vanilla, this is amazing.
It is just the right creamy, crunchy, light,
and that vanilla bean we used, came through hunty.
(laughs) All I'm gonna say.
That is a nice flaky crust.
That's really good.
I love you pie, you're my best friend.
If you like this recipe, check out my ultimate vanilla cake.
It is all of your vanilla dreams come true.
If you like my videos, don't forget to hit that like button
and subscribe, and I'll see you soon!