Pastry Cream

By aaronatthedoublef

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  • January 29, 2017 at 6:54 am #6425
    aaronatthedoublef
    Participant

      Hello. I've been meaning to post this since the Great American Baking show as it raised a question for me.

      The contestants would invariably make something with some kind of pastry cream and whip it together in as little as two hours - things like mille-feuille or some of the Pavlova or pate choux.

      It's been a while since I made pate choux but my pastry cream always needed to sit for at least 12 hours. The difference was very noticeable. I even vaguely remember an episode of Good Eats where Alton Brown said something to that effect but I'll be darned if I can find it and I do not remember why.

      So how did these contestants make pastry cream that was good in under an hour?
      Thanks

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      January 29, 2017 at 11:36 am #6430
      S_Wirth
      Participant

        This has nothing to do with Aaron's pastry cream question on the recent show...but long ago, PJH of KAF discovered a quick and easy pastry cream that is quite acceptable.

        Use 1 box (4 serving size) of INSTANT vanilla pudding and use cream instead of the milk called for on the box of pudding.

        January 29, 2017 at 12:46 pm #6432
        Mike Nolan
        Keymaster

          A few years ago I made a large batch of eclairs (like 8 dozen) and wound up making about 6 batches of pastry cream (several of them gluten-free, to go in gluten-free eclairs). With practice, the prepping/cooking part is not where you spend the most time.

          The most time-consuming part of making pastry cream is chilling it, and spreading it fairly thin on a sheet pan then putting it in a blast chiller is one way cooking competitors have to speed that up. Using a drum sieve to strain it saves time, too.

          And they don't usually wait for it to get fully chilled and set, they just get it down to about 80. An extra egg yolk or two will produce a fairly firm pastry cream even when it's tepid. I have discovered, though, that it is possible to have a pastry cream get too eggy, it tastes more like scrambled eggs than pastry cream.

          January 30, 2017 at 4:40 pm #6467
          aaronatthedoublef
          Participant

            Hmmm... Wonder what my wife would say if I asked for a blast chiller for father's day?

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