Vanilla Pastry Cream

Vanilla Pastry Cream

Ingredients

250 grams Whole milk or almond milk
4 grams Vanilla extract
64 grams Granulated sugar
1 Egg
1 Egg yolk
13 grams All-purpose flour
13 grams Corn starch
26 grams Butter

Preparation

Using a stainless sauce pan.
Combine the milk, vanilla extract and bring to a simmer.
Whisk the egg, egg yolk and sugar. Mix for a minute.
Add sifted flour and corn starch to eggs mixture and mix well.
Whisk some of the hot milk mixture with the eggs mixture to temper it. This keeps the eggs from turning to scrambled eggs when you add them to the simmering milk.
Pour the egg/milk mixture back into the remaining simmering milk. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly with a whisk, until the mixture thickens.
Add butter and mix well, the temperature should reach 73°C/165°F. This is important: if the pastry cream doesn’t reach 173°C/165°F on the stovetop it won’t set properly as it cools, and may be soft and runny.
Remove from the heat, strain  and pour into a bowl set in an ice bath. Cover the top with a plastic wrap and make sure it touches the top of the pastry cream so it doesn’t develop a skin. If you’re going to flavor the pastry cream with chocolate or some other flavor, this is the time to do it. Chill pastry cream at least for 4 hours.
Use chilled pastry cream as is for a sliceable cream pie, or a stiff filling for éclairs.
Pastry cream will keep, covered in the refrigerator, for up to 5 days. After that it may start to weep.

Please take pictures of the finished product and post it on Instagram tagging ‘@chichifoofoo_official‘ and then enjoy your creation!