I've been wanting to detail the recipe for pastry cream for about 1000 years. After all, it's both one of the simplest and most used cream recipes in pastry making. Indeed, you find it raw in eclairs, cooked for flans and as a base for other creams like mousseline cream.
Storage of pastry cream
It's not really complicated, you just need to pay attention to a few points. First of all in terms of hygiene, let's remember that pastry cream is quite sensitive and must be consumed within 24 hours to avoid food poisoning. It must also be made with boiled milk, cooked for at least 1 minute and cooled quickly on a stainless steel tray (or a glass dish if needed). Small tip, you can store your empty container in the freezer to speed up cooling.
Making chocolate pastry cream
For the process, it's quite simple. Just boil a liter of milk in a thick-bottomed saucepan with a vanilla pod split in half and emptied of its pulp (which you put in the milk). Here, I chose to make chocolate pastry cream but you can very well leave it plain (vanilla then) or flavor it with coffee (personally I hate that, but it's possible!).
1st step: mixing eggs and sugar
In the meantime, quickly mix (in a robot bowl it's much more practical!), the eggs, sugar and pastry cream powder. Pastry cream powder is a preparation made from cornstarch and vanilla. It's starting to be found in supermarkets but you can easily replace it with plain cornstarch (or even flour). I use a recipe where the eggs are whole because I find it practical not to have to recycle the whites. But you can find recipes with only yolks.
2nd step: boiling the milk
When the milk boils, remove it from the heat and remove the pieces of vanilla pod. Pour the milk over the egg/sugar mixture while continuing to beat. Indeed, if you pour boiling milk directly onto the eggs, they will cook and form lumps. When the mixture is well homogeneous, put it back on low heat, beating gently with a whisk. This is when you can add the flavoring, for me cocoa paste.
Cooking the pastry cream
As it heats, the cream will thicken until it reaches the consistency of mayonnaise. When it starts to boil, wait a good minute (a matter of hygiene as I said) and boom, transfer it to our frozen container. Film it directly and head to the fridge for at least one hour. In a lab, you can put it in the freezer for 5 minutes (no more at the risk of having a pastry block, which would be really unfortunate).
The cream obtained this way can be used to fill choux buns, eclairs, a mille-feuille… Or to make a mousseline cream or a diplomat cream.
And in case of leftovers don't hesitate to recycle it as flan, it's delicious!
Chocolate pastry cream
