Confectioner's custard (Crème pâtissière, or French pastry cream )

Confectioner's custard (Crème pâtissière, or French pastry cream ) [final photo]

Quite similar to crème anglaise but much thicker. It is used in many pastries like choux pastry (pâte à choux) or millefeuille.

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For300 g 450 g 900 g 1 kg 800 g 2 kg 700 g

MeasuresMetric

Metric weight Metric volumes Read more...

For 2 kg 700 g, you will need:

18 egg yolks
300 g caster sugar
1 litre 500 ml milk
120 g cornflour
3 vanilla pods

Nutritional information:

Whole recipe

Calories

4067

163%

Proteins

145g

19%

Carbohydrates

438g

32%

Fats

193g

51%

Per 100 g

Calories

178

7%

Proteins

6g

1%

Carbohydrates

19g

1%

Fats

8g

2%

% are calculated relative to a Recommended Dietary Intake or RDI of 2500 k-calories by day for a man (change to a woman).

Times:

Preparation : 10 min.
Resting : 10 min.
Cooking : 10 min.
Start to finish : 30 min.

How much?

For 2 kg 700 g : 10.92 €

Change currency:

Note : These prices are only approximate. Read more...

Step by step recipe:

Pour 1 litre 500 ml milk into a pan, and add the inside of 3 vanilla pods (the little black seeds) after carefully scraping them out with the tip a knife. Bring to the boil on medium heat. As soon as it boils, take off the heat, cover and leave vanilla to infuse 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, put 18 egg yolks in a bowl and add 300 g caster sugar, and without delay beat to mix thoroughly. It is not necessary to beat for a long time to whiten, so it can be done by hand with a whisk in one or two minutes.
Add then 120 g cornflour, and beat again with the whisk.
Then slowly pour the hot milk onto the mixture while beating continuously until thoroughly mixed.
Transfer the mixture back into the pan.
Unlike for crème anglaise or crème brûlée, it is not essential to remove the froth, it will get mixed in during cooking. But it's better...
Put the pan on low-medium heat, and cook gently while beating continuously. It's important to scrape the whisk over the bottom of the pan to avoid custard sticking.
Cooking is complete when custard is of a good consistency, in other words like a thickish purée, but not too firm.. The custard thickens quite quickly, especially if the heat is high, so do not to hesitate to take pan off heat, while continuing to stir, if this happens. Also, remember that your custard will continue cooking for a little while after being removed from the heat, so bear this in mind when deciding at what point to stop...
Once custard is finished, cover the pan to avoid a skin forming. Later, if you use the custard cold and it is too stiff, beat one or two tablespoonsful of cream into it vigorously.

Remarks:

These proportions will allow you to make about 900g of cream, you can of course make smaller quantities by reducing the weight of all ingredients.

It's possible to flavour confectioner's custurd with other things rather than vanilla: coffee, alcohols, etc... You can also make a chocolate custard by folding about 100 g of chocolate, broken in small pieces into the custard with the whisk while it is still hot.

Recipes which use it: 6

Of which: Pear and lime meringue pie - Pistachio cream - Millefeuille - Strawberries with mint and cream - Almond cream - ...

Source:

After Gaston Lenôtre.

Last modified on: January 9^th 2010

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Your comments or questions on this recipe:

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this recipe turned out very well in the chinois I made but I added apricot brandy instead of eau de vie de mirabelle. Big mistake. It was terrible. No fault to the pastry cream recipe though the flavor and texture on the remake without the brandy was fantastic!

Comment #1 posted on june 18^th 2009 at 19:40 by Iowonian.