Hey everyone! It's Sam here from Sugar Spun Run and today I'll be showing you how to make a simple completely homemade vanilla pastry cream.
So today's recipe for pastry cream is pretty simple. This is a great recipe for
using in cream puffs, or eclairs, or Boston cream pie, and today I want to
show you how to make this simple staple recipe. To get started you're going to
want a medium sized heavy-bottomed saucepan and we'll place this on our stovetop.
We're going to add one cup of milk
and one cup of heavy cream into our saucepan.
and we'll also add 1/3 cup of granulated sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt
and today I'm going to be using a vanilla bean. Now you can substitute
vanilla extract instead, I'll explain that a little bit later on. You won't add
the vanilla extract at this point, if you are using that, but using a vanilla bean
is going to help really give this pastry cream a great flavor. As you can probably
see, I've gone and broken this one in half and I've just split it lengthwise.
That way the vanilla bean seeds can really escape into the pastry cream while
they're cooking. So I'm just going to toss these in and we'll turn our stove
top heat to medium, and we're just going to stir this pretty frequently until the
sugar is dissolved and the mixture comes to a simmer.
So as soon as this is simmering we're going to remove our saucepan from the heat. We're going to
set this aside and we're going to let it cool for at least 10 to 15 minutes.
Meanwhile as your cream mixture is cooling it's also going to be steeping,
really working in that vanilla bean flavor. we're gonna let that cool for 10
minutes, and in the meantime we're going to move over to our egg mixture so you
are going to need 5 egg yolks, no whites, just the yolks for this recipe. We'll add
3 tablespoons of granulated sugar in with our egg yolks, and we're just going
to whisk together the egg yolks and the sugar until the sugar is starting to
dissolve a little bit. It's gonna be about 15 seconds of whisking.
So once you've whisked in your sugar, we're going to add cornstarch. This is
3 tablespoons of cornstarch. This is going to help thicken up our pastry
cream. So we're just going to add this over the egg mixture and we'll whisk
another 30 seconds or so until the cornstarch and egg mixture are well
combined, and the mixture is even thickened a little bit. So now we have
our egg mixture ready, and once your cream mixture has cooled for at least
those 10 to 15 minutes now we're going to combine the two.
You have to do this carefully though, because you do not want to cook your
eggs. So we're going to slowly add the cream mixture to the egg mixture, while
whisking. So you can start to just slowly drizzle this in straight from the pot.
What I'm going to do is just use a measuring cup. I'll scoop up some of that,
and while I'm whisking I'm just going to slowly drizzle this in.
and I'll just repeat that with another cup full. So what we've done here is, we've tempered
our egg mixture by slowly introducing the cream mixture, the hot cream mixture,
to the eggs. So now we can add the rest of it without running the risk of
cooking our eggs and curdling the mixture. So I'm just going to pour the
rest of this cream mixture into the eggs while whisking, and you can toss those
vanilla beans in there.That's fine. They're going to get strained out
in the end. So we're doing a little bit of back-and-forth, and now that we've
combined these two, we're going to actually pour this back into our
saucepan, and the reason we're going back and forth like this, is because it's
important that you slowly introduce the cream to the egg mixture.
You can't slowly put the egg mixture into the cream mixture; you're going to
immediately cook the eggs. So we have to slowly transfer everything over to the
bowl, and then back to the saucepan. We're putting it back in the saucepan, and now
we are going to take this back over to our stovetop, and we'll set our heat to
medium heat, and we're just going to whisk this constantly until it's
thickened. It's going to start to bubble. You want it to reach that kind of
pudding consistency. It doesn't have to be completely thickened. It's going to
continue to thicken as it cools, but once it starts to really thicken up, you want to remove that from heat
So once we've removed the pastry cream from the heat
you are going to want to keep whisking this for a couple seconds. The pan is
still hot. You don't want the cream to burn to the bottom of the pan so just
keep whisking it for a couple seconds longer. So now we're going to actually
strain the pastry cream into the serving dish, or whatever you're going to be
holding it in until you're ready to use it. So I'm going to be using a fine mesh
strainer here, and I'm just going to set this over my heat proof bowl and I'm
just going to pour my pastry cream through the strainer.
Now the cream is pretty thick, as you can see. So it's not going to just go through
the strainer on its own. So I'm gonna use my spatula to just kind of help coax it
through my strainer, and as you can see those vanilla beans are going to get
left behind. We don't need them anymore at this point. The reason you want to
strain this mixture is because just in case any pieces of egg got cooked, or you
have any lumps in here, putting it through the strainer is going to filter
those out. So you'll have a nice smooth pastry cream.
And just when you though you were done whisking, we do actually have a little bit more to do. Now if you
were using vanilla extract instead of the vanilla bean, you would add that now.
You'd add one and a half teaspoons of vanilla extract, at this point, and we're
also going to add four tablespoons of softened unsalted butter. Now we're just
going to add one tablespoon at a time, and we're going to whisk really well
after each addition, until all of the butter pieces have been completely
combined into the pastry cream.
Alright so this looks pretty good our pastry cream is actually pretty much done at this point. All it needs to do now is
chill. So what we're going to do is, right now, while it's still warm, you're going
to need a piece of plastic wrap and we're just going to push this gently
into the surface of the pastry cream. Just press that surface of the plastic
wrap into the surface of the pastry cream, and this is going to help keep a
skin from forming on your pastry cream.
You'll want to let your pastry cream sit at room temperature for about 20 to 30
minutes, or until it's really cooled down, and is almost at room temperature itself.
And then once it has you'll transfer it to your refrigerator where we will want
to let it chill for at least two hours before using it.
So after about two hours in the oven your pastry cream is actually done and it's ready to use.
I usually like to stir it up a little bit, after I uncover it, and before I use it,
but this pastry cream as I mentioned it's great for eclairs. It's great for
cream puffs. It's great for Boston cream pie. This is a great very versatile
vanilla pastry cream. I really hope you guys enjoy today's recipe and if you try
it out please leave me a comment I would really appreciate it
thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time.
Hey if you guys enjoyed today's pastry cream recipe, I would really appreciate it if you gave me a thumbs up.
Make sure to hit that notification bell, and please subscribe.
Also if you enjoyed this recipe, here are a few others you might like as well.