Pastry Cream

[Mike Nolan]

Pastry Cream

Yield: 1 batch
Source: Catherine McDonald

Ingredients

2 cups milk (scalded)
1 egg
1/4 cup flour
1 TB cornstarch
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup sugar
1 TB butter
1 tsp vanilla or 1 TB cooking sherry
1/4 pint whipping cream (optional, we usually skip it)
Instructions

Scald milk in double boiler. (I often do it in the microwave.)

Mix dry ingredients (except salt) and pour milk over them.

Cook in double boiler while stirring, until VERY thick. (Takes a long time, should hold on a spoon.)

Cover, cook an additional 15 minutes.

Add butter, egg (temper the egg first) and salt and cook a little longer.

Strain through a medium sieve.

Chill, then add flavoring and (optionally)
fold in 1/4 pint whipped cream (whipped to stiff peaks.)

We usually add the vanilla once it has cooled to about 120 degrees.

This recipe doubles easily. My wife says she almost always doubled it because, well, not all the pastry cream made it into the cream puffs. 🙂

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• This topic was modified 8 years, 6 months ago by Mike Nolan.

[Rascals1]

Mike, no cream puffs here because there is something wrong with the Pastry cream recipe. It doesn't seem to be very stable, it vanishes by the time it cools off. But it sure is good.

[Mike Nolan]

The last several times I've made pastry cream, I increased the amount of cornstarch and left out the wheat flour, so that it was gluten-free. Nobody noticed the difference. Last June I made a batch of gluten-free choux paste, so I had gluten-free eclairs, and they were very good. All I did was substitute a gluten-free flour mix for the wheat flour in the choux recipe I was using.

For a somewhat richer pastry cream, use two egg yolks instead of a whole egg. It's the yolk that thickens pastry cream. It also thickens a bit faster.

[Rascals1]

It was so funny Mike my daughter in law and I made the cream and went outside to wait for it to cool to put in the cream puffs and when we came back in the cream was gone and 3 young boys had smiles on their faces.

[cwcdesign]

Thanks for the smile, Rascals 🙂

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