Pastry Cream

This is a silky egg yolk-rich pastry cream with a lovely colour and good vanilla flavour.

The method is quite different from the standard in that all of the ingredients are combined at the start and heated together. The recipe calls for custard powder or flour as thickener; I went the flour route and it gave me a bit of difficulty….though my mixture looked well blended and smooth when it went into the pot, the flour did clump a little. Vigorous whisking eliminated most lumps and sieving the custard kept the final few out of the finished product.

The flavour and texture were good but not particularly different from other pastry cream recipes that don’t require a stand mixer and use cornstarch, which dissolves more easily than flour. I made this to fill the tropézienne.