There is a pastry-making basic that everyone should make at home, the custard cream recipe. If you've never dared to make it before, you should know that you don't need a food processor, or even an electric mixer, let alone magical powers. You only need a saucepan and a whisk, and in just a few minutes! Prepare pastry cream It’s one of the easiest things there is. Believe me! It’s easy and quick, and with this recipe and a few basic tips to make it, you'll create a delicious pastry cream with a creamy texture and that vanilla flavor everyone loves so much.
The pastry cream is a recipe that you can Use in a multitude of sweet recipes: in cakes, tartlets, sponge cakes, with puff pastry, crêpes, mille-feuille... Its use is truly widespread, as both its flavor and texture are excellent in sweet recipes (whether on its own or paired with fruit, cream, chocolate...). That is, of course, if you can manage not to eat it by the spoonful first!
Hoy we bring you a basic, easy, foolproof recipe so you can make custard at home. With this step-by-step guide and the basic tips you'll see, you'll make perfect pastry cream on the first try!
Ingredients for making pastry cream
- 500 ml of milk
- 1 vanilla bean*
- 100 g of sugar
- 40gr of cornstarch (Maicena)
- 4 egg yolks
*If you don't have a vanilla bean, you can use a teaspoon of liquid vanilla extract. Purists will throw up their hands in horror, but the results are excellent, as long as you use a quality extract (otherwise it will really ruin the flavor of the end result). The authentic Madagascar vanilla extract it is a highly recommended option.
De Buyer copper saucepan, Madagascar vanilla extract and Le Creuset ceramic tartlet molds
What utensils do you need?
- A separator for egg whites and eggs (optional)
- A bowl
- A saucepan
- A hand whisk
Preparation
Time de preparación: 15 minutes
- Put the milk in the saucepan with the vanilla pod (without the seeds) and bring it to a boil. After a few seconds, remove the saucepan from the heat and set aside.
- Separate the egg yolks from the whites manually or with a egg white separator.
- In a bowl and with the help of some rodsmix the egg yolks with the sugar and cornstarch until everything is combined.
- Remove the vanilla pod from the milk you set aside earlier and add the milk to the mixture you prepared. You should do this little by little, stirring constantly, until you get a smooth mixture.
- Put the mixture into the saucepan and return it to the heat over low temperature. Keep stirring with a whisk (Careful! It’s important not to stop stirring, the ball-tip rods are a great utensil in this case). After a few minutes, you’ll see it start to thicken, and a few seconds later you’ll see that the cream is ready.
- Remove from the heat, pour it into a bowl, and cover it with plastic wrap. The plastic wrap should touch the custard to prevent a skin from forming.
Notes
- With the amount of the indicated ingredients you will get about 650 g of pastry cream, which is a generous amount. If you want to make less, you just need to reduce the ingredients proportionally.
- One common problem when making custard is that the egg yolks curdle when you add the milk to the mixture. This is due to the high temperature of the milk. To avoid it, just make sure the milk has cooled slightly, or add it little by little (add a few spoonfuls first, then keep adding it gradually from there without stopping stirring), to prevent the mixture from getting too hot.
- The pastry cream can be used directly in your recipes, warm or cold (e.g., added to a previously baked puff pastry tartlet), or you can add it to doughs that need to go in the oven without any problem, either as a filling or as an outer decoration (the cream will hold up wonderfully despite baking).
- You can store homemade pastry cream in the fridge for 3 days.
Now that you know how to make a delicious pastry cream, you might be interested in seeing Recipe ideas with pastry cream: here.
