Crème Pâtissièrie – Sweet Vanilla Pastry Cream

Crème pâtissièrie is a rich vanilla egg custard. Use this in a profierole (creme puff) or eclair and your guests will be rolling their eyes with pleasure.  I’m going to show you a trick that will enable even a beginner to make perfect Crème Pâtissièrie.

Note: If I am using Crème Pâtissière for cream puffs I will double this recipe except for the flour

Ingredients

1 egg
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 1/4 cups whole milk
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/3 cup superfine or ultrafine sugar

Tools & Supplies

Saucepan
Mixing bowl
Wooden spoon
Whisk
Fine sieve
Spatula

Instructions

Using a wooden spoon, mix the flour, sugar, eggs (whole egg and egg yolks) together in the mixing bowl and set aside.

Heat the milk over low heat. Stir continuously until steam is rising and a ring of little bubbles has formed along the edge around the entire circumference of the liquid. (Actually, if it comes to a light boil that’s OK to).

An aside for beginners: If you dump the hot milk into the egg mixture all at once you are going to end up cooking the eggs – you’ll get scrambled eggs instead of crème pâtissièrie.  You want to temper the eggs – adding a little of the hot milk at a time while whisking vigorously. The objective is to slowly and gently bring the eggs up to temperature.

Slowly pour 1/2 cup of the hot milk into the eggs while whisk vigorously, and keep whisking. Once they are combined, add another 1/2 cup of hot milk and repeat.  Keep repeating until all the milk has been mixed with the eggs. (If there are a few bits of ‘scrambled egg in the mixture don’t worry – I’m going to show you how to eliminate them in a later step).

Add the vanilla extract and mix thoroughly. Continue to beat the mixture until it has reached the desired consistency.  If you are making creme puffs you will want the crème pâtissière to be stiff enough to support itsef and the top of the choux bun.

To eliminate any small bits of scrambled egg that have formed, force the mixture through a fine sieve using a spatula.

Congratulations.  You just made crème pâtissière.