Modern Vanilla Pastry Cream

What makes this variation "modern” is the use of a blender to smooth out any lumps instead of a sieve to remove them. Up until this final step, the method is standard: hot milk added to a mixture of eggs, sugar and cornstarch and cooked until thickened. The chilled cream was very aerated and had to be stirred down before it could be used. I don’t mind using modern equipment if it makes sense……it didn’t seem to in this case.

This recipe does produce a wonderful pastry cream: rich and creamy, not too sweet with fantastic vanilla flavour (both a steeped vanilla bean and vanilla extract are used). This will be my go-to recipe from now on but I’ll stick to using an "old-fashioned” sieve.