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Pastry cream, also known as crème pâtissière, is essential in many French pastry recipes and is arguably the best part of decadent Boston cream pie and donuts, though it’s also delicious enough to just eat on its own with a spoon. A good pastry cream is so essential that it’s the one recipe Alton Brown thinks you should have memorized, but even the most talented bakers can slip up and occasionally produce a pastry cream that’s too runny. Still, the biggest mistake you’re probably making with your pastry cream is overcooking it, which causes the eggs to scramble and leaves your cream chunky in texture rather than silky smooth. To learn how to make pastry cream with an ideal consistency, we reached out to an expert.
We spoke with pastry chef Jerrelle Guy, author of the James Beard Award-nominated cookbook, “Black Girl Baking,” for her expertise about the best way to thicken homemade pastry cream. Guy, who is also the creator behind The Dinner Ritual, has one simple ingredient to suggest for thickening pastry cream that’s likely already in your pantry. “Cornstarch is the most reliable thickener and doesn’t give off that raw flour taste or create a dense texture like regular flour does,” says Guy. Thickening a pastry cream with cornstarch starts at the beginning, as opposed to adding a cornstarch slurry in toward the end of cooking, like you’d do with a sauce. The cornstarch is added in the first step: “Start by whisking the cornstarch and granulated sugar together first to prevent unnecessary clumping,” explains Guy.
More tips for making perfectly thick and smooth pastry cream
After combining the sugar and cornstarch, whisk the egg yolks into the cornstarch and sugar blend until you’ve formed a pale yellow paste. Chef Guy tells us that the egg yolks provide both structure and rich flavor to the pastry cream. From there, use a whisk to slowly incorporate warm milk into the paste, streaming it in slowly and whisking until it’s homogenous. This tempers the eggs gently to bring them to a warmer temperature without fully cooking them. After that, “once the milk is mixed in, add this mixture to a saucepan to cook, stirring non-stop, until it thickens,” instructs Guy. Be careful not to use too high of a heat on the stove, as you don’t want the eggs to curdle or overcook.
Pull the pastry cream off of the stove just before it’s completely thickened to your liking, as the residual heat will continue to cook the pastry cream slightly. Finish by whisking in a bit of unsalted butter to give the pastry cream a velvety texture before transferring it to a clean bowl and setting that bowl inside an ice bath to cool the cream quickly. Make sure to lay a piece of plastic wrap over the surface of the pastry cream to prevent it from developing a skin on top before refrigerating. When you’re ready to try your hand at homemade DIY pastry cream, brush up on these eight pastry cream pro-tips before starting so you can make the most delicious version possible.
