If you’ve never heard of pastry cream, say hello to your new decadent, creamy, and delicious best friend. Today I’m showing you step-by-step how to achieve the most perfect homemade pastry cream.
How to Make Pastry Cream
Making your own pastry cream, I learned very quickly, is both an art and a dance all at the same time. I still remember the first time I tried making it – it was only a couple weeks after I had Owen and I was stir crazy. I went into a full-blown French baking craze. I made everything from croissants to macarons to choux buns. I made tarts and kougin amann and puff pastry. So of course I had to learn how to make the holy grail of French pastry… Pastry cream. Let’s just say that first attempt didn’t go according to plan lol. I ended up with what I’d call chunky soup… not exactly the texture I was going for to fill my tart!
But after many attempts (and a lot of egg yolks), I finally nailed it, and now I know how to recreate it every time! Don’t let my first experience turn you away though.. that’s why I wanted to bring you this detailed tutorial – so that you don’t make the same mistakes I did.
What is Pastry Cream?
Pastry cream, or “crème pâtissière” in French is created when you heat milk, eggs, sugar, starch, and flavorings together resulting in a rich, thick, and creamy custard-like pudding. Its one of the more versatile ingredients used in classic French pastries, and its delicious in newer, more modern recipes as well.
It can be spread into pies and tarts, piped into éclairs and choux buns to make cream puffs (pâte à choux), or just eaten on its own. You could even use it in this pavlova recipe, it’d be delicious!! This is a staple ingredient that every baker should be well versed in – so I’m going to show you how to make it!
Ingredients You’ll Need
Step 1 – Steep your Milk
This is where we do the bulk of flavoring our pastry cream. Whether you’re wanting to stick with just plain vanilla (like I’m doing here), add some orange liqueur, coconut extract, etc., you’ll want to do that here. Gently heating the vanilla beans or extracts with the milk allows the flavors to begin to marry in the most beautiful way.
Typically I use a vanilla bean that I’ve halved lengthwise and scraped the seeds from, adding everything to the saucepan and straining the bean out at the end – that way we get allll the vanilla flavor. If you don’t have any vanilla beans though, I’d recommend using vanilla bean paste. That way you can still see the little vanilla seeds 🙂 but vanilla extract also works just fine as well.
So, you’ll just gently heat this over medium heat until it just comes to a simmer.
Step 2 – Whisk the egg yolks, sugar, and cornstarch
While the milk is heating, you’ll combine the yolks, sugar, and cornstarch in a bowl and beat it vigorously with a whisk until it’s smooth and pale yellow in color. This will typically take around 2 to 3 full minutes of beating. This part is actually so funny because at the beginning you’ll be thinking “there’s no way these ingredients are going to combine into this smooth mixture,” but just keep beating and I promise you’ll get there!
The color of the yolks will go from a deep yellow/orange color to a very pale yellow, close to white. That’s when you know you’re there!
Step 3 – Temper the eggs
Anytime you’re combining eggs with a hot milk, water, cream, etc. (really just anything hot), you’ll need to slowly warm up the eggs so you don’t end up with scrambled eggs. If you were to pour the eggs straight into the milk in the saucepan, you have a greater risk of cooking the eggs all the way through.
Instead, we’ll slowly ladle about half of the milk into the egg mixture while whisking constantly. Remember when I said making pastry cream is like a dance? Yeah, this is that lol.
So, we’ll add some of the milk to the eggs, whisk constantly, then add all the egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining milk. Don’t stop whisking!
Step 4 – WHISK
After testing and testing and testing this recipe, I learned that this is step that makes or breaks your pastry cream. You’re going to continue cooking the cream in the saucepan over medium heat until it thickens up really nicely. The tricky part is that the starch and the eggs have to cook long enough for that thickening to take place, all while not overcooking the mixture.
So how do we do that? WHISK. The first few times I made pastry cream I realized that I wasn’t whisking hard enough, for long enough. We gotta put our back into this and whisk vigorously. You’ll notice the cream will begin to thicken, and you want to see some bubbles, but you also don’t want it to boil. The whole process will take about 5 to 7 minutes.
Step 5 – Strain
Some solids get left behind in the mixture, and because we want smooth, creamy pastry cream, we’ll just strain it through a fine-mesh sieve and that’ll do the trick. It is important that you strain this into a clean bowl to stop the cooking. You want to remove it from any heat source as soon as possible.
Step 6 – Stir in the butter
Butter is what takes pastry cream to the next level (but lets be honest – isn’t this what butter does in every recipe?? lol), and we’ll whisk it into the cream until its completely melted and combined.
Step 7 – Stir in chocolate (if desired)
If you’re wanting to make chocolate pastry cream, this is where you’ll stir in the chocolate. I like to use chopped bittersweet chocolate, and usually I use ghirardelli chocolate as its very widely available. As you stir it into the hot cream it will melt and get nice and smooth.
Step 8 – Cover, refrigerate, and enjoy
Pastry cream needs to cool back down quickly, so we need to cover it with plastic wrap and get it into the refrigerator asap. Here’s the trick though: you need to press the plastic wrap directly on the pastry cream (not just over top of the bowl). If you don’t do this, a skin will form on the top of the cream and that will make it chunky 🙁
You’ll chill the cream for at least 2 hours or up to 3 days in the refrigerator. Then, when you’re ready to use it simply remove it from the fridge, let it come to room temperature and whisk it until it’s smooth.
Variations of Pastry Cream
Here are a couple ideas for different variations…
- Coconut pastry cream – steep the milk with coconut extract
- Pumpkin spice pastry cream – add 1 tsp ground cinnamon, 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg, 1/2 tsp ground ginger, and 1/4 tsp ground cloves to the egg yolks and sugar, whisking to combine
- Vanilla-honey pastry cream – steep milk with 1/4 cup honey
- Coffee pastry cream – add 1 tsp instant espresso powder to egg yolks and sugar, whisking to combine
- Chocolate mocha pastry cream – add 1 tsp instant espresso powder to egg yolks and sugar, whisking to combine. Stir in chocolate with butter at the end
- Citrus – add 1 to 2 tsp lemon/lime/orange zest to egg yolks and sugar, whisking to combine
Vanilla Pastry Cream
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole milk
- 2 tsp vanilla bean paste or use pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 5 large egg yolks*
- 6 Tbsp butter cubed and chilled
Instructions
- Combine milk, vanilla, and salt in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Bring mixture to a simmer, whisking occasionally, and cook 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, combine sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a large bowl. Whisk vigorously 2 full minutes or until mixture is very pale and thick.
- Slowly ladle about half of the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining milk.
- Increase the heat to medium and continue to cook, whisking constantly, 3 to 5 minutes or until cream has the thickness of pudding and becomes glossy in texture.
- Scrape pastry cream into a fine mesh sieve set over a clean bowl, pressing with a spoon or spatula to get cream through.
- Whisk in butter, one cube at a time, until smooth. Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pastry cream and refrigerate until it's cold, at least 4 hours.
Notes
Chocolate Pastry Cream
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole milk
- 1 tsp vanilla bean paste or use pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 tsp kosher salt
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 5 large egg yolks
- 6 Tbsp butter cubed and chilled
- 1 (4-oz) bar semisweet chocolate finely chopped
Instructions
- Combine milk, vanilla, and salt in a large, heavy-bottomed saucepan over medium-low heat. Bring mixture to a simmer, whisking occasionally, and cook 5 minutes.
- Meanwhile, combine sugar, cornstarch, and egg yolks in a large bowl. Whisk vigorously 2 full minutes or until mixture is very pale and thick.
- Slowly ladle about half of the hot milk mixture into the egg mixture, whisking constantly. Pour egg mixture into the saucepan with the remaining milk.
- Increase the heat to medium and continue to cook, whisking constantly, 3 to 5 minutes or until cream has the thickness of pudding and becomes glossy in texture.
- Scrape pastry cream into a fine mesh sieve set over a clean bowl, pressing with a spoon or spatula to get cream through.
- Whisk in butter, one cube at a time, until smooth. Whisk in chocolate until melted and smooth.
- Press a sheet of plastic wrap directly onto the surface of the pastry cream and refrigerate until it's cold, at least 4 hours.
Notes
