How to Make Pastry Cream _ The MOST Delicious Thing Ever!!!

Hey , I'm John Cannell .

And today on Preppy kitchen , we're making a rich silky pastry cream .

So let's get started .

First off , I'm adding two cups of milk into a medium sized pot .

And I wanna tell you this is whole milk .

I'm using pastry cream should be rich and delicious .

And this is a heavy bottomed pot .

If you use a thin walled pot , like if you hear that , it's like a tinny sound , your pastry cream could easily scor and it makes your job so much harder .

So grab a thicker pot .

It really distributes the heat evenly .

If you wanted , you could have used a 2% .

But like let's use whole milk for this .

It should be so rich silky and luscious .

Today , I'm going all out and using a vanilla bean .

These guys are quite the luxury , but I had one in the pantry that was begging to be used if you want .

You could also use a vanilla bean paste , which is uh basically vanilla beans mixed up with a sugar water solution or you could use vanilla extract .

Everything's gonna be delicious .

Use a sharp knife to open the pot up and you're gonna see thousands of little tiny seeds busting out of there .

The flavor is in those guys .

Now , you're gonna use your knife to scrape this pot open .

Don't worry if you don't get all the seeds out because we're gonna add the whole pod right into our pot just like that .

Wow .

That is black gold for bakers .

Carefully collect your very valuable seeds .

We're gonna pop that right into our pot along with the pot itself , set that over medium heat and let it come to a simmer , but keep an eye on it because we do not want that milk to boil over .

I am so excited to make this creme or pastry cream recipe for you .

It is one of my all time favorite things to eat and it's great in everything from chocolate .

A Clare's Boston cream pie , Mil Foy various kinds of filled tarts or just straight into your mouth .

It is that good ?

I have six room temperature eggs .

I need to separate them .

We are using the yolks today .

The whites you can reserve for something amazing .

Like little meringue kisses .

How cute that is .

They're so delicious .

Just egg whites and sugar with vanilla and something else .

Six egg yolks , please .

The whites go in the small bowl , the yolks go in the vic .

Normally it's the other way around .

It doesn't matter if you get some yolk in your whites unless you're using it to make a meringue later on .

Six .

There we go right now .

I need a kiss of sweetness from two thirds of a cup of granulated sugar .

That's 100 and 35 g .

Come take a look .

My milk is simmering right now .

So we're gonna take it off heat and let that infuse you want all of that vanilla flavor to really seep into the milk .

If you're using vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste , just take it off heat and you're good to go .

But if you're using a van , give it 15 minutes just to like spread the vanilla love .

Grab a whisk .

And today you can see , I'm using a French whisk .

It's actually a narrow whisk .

People from France have told me that in France they don't call it a French whisk .

But here we do as opposed to a balloon whisk .

A balloon whisk is so wide .

You can't get the corners of your pot , which will come in really handy later .

My scale is done for a moment .

We're gonna whisk this up .

I'm gonna do it by hand right away .

The sugar is incorporated .

That's easy .

But we want to this up a bit more until it thickens slightly .

And I have a lighter lemony color pastry cream is an amazing custard .

It's delicious .

It's silky , but it's actually surprisingly easy to make .

It's easier than a lot of other custards where things can go left because we're gonna add a magical ingredient .

That is so great .

For all different types of baking .

That ingredient is cornstarch .

I have to explain this to you because it's so interesting .

These egg yolks , of course , they have protein in them .

The protein when you heat it up does some special things .

Actually , it does the opposite of a special thing because proteins work by having a specific shape .

They're all twisted up and naughty .

And they fit into each other like this does special jobs , helps us live et cetera .

But when you cook the proteins , they unfold , it's called denaturing and they're like this .

Like that's why you cook an egg .

It just becomes hard and rubbery , right ?

We want that but kind of , we want to unfold the proteins so they can coagulate or become thicker , but we don't wanna cook them .

So they're hard and chewy .

That'd be gross , right ?

We're gonna use the egg yolks .

But to make this easier on us , we're adding that magical ingredient of corn starch .

The starch is gonna help stabilize the protein and let things go smoothly .

They become very silky .

It's kind of like a protective measure too because even if you use a little bit too much heat , the corn starch is there to help you out .

Now , I'm gonna add a quarter cup or 37 g of this corn starch right into my eggs .

My scale is done .

Now , we're gonna whip this up .

I just need there to be no lumps in my corn starch .

It looks so beautiful though .

With the light and this light lemony color .

I do see some lumps though .

So we are gonna whisk them through my hot milk mixture has had time to infuse .

I'm pulling out my bean .

You could save this and actually use it to make more vanilla milk for your kids or for you to enjoy for your coffee one quarter cup of this hot mixture .

I don't wanna scramble any of these eggs .

So extreme heat will cause the eggs to curdle a bit , the whole protein denaturing thing .

So what we're gonna do is slowly drizzle in a quarter cup to temper the mixture .

Tempering just means you're taking something hot in a small quantity and adding it to something cold to warm that cold thing up .

So it's not shocked by the heat and I love seeing these vanilla beans .

It makes me so happy .

Now we're gonna add the rest of the milk in .

Don't worry about all this junk you see here because there's a lot of like vanilla pod nonsense happening .

So we're just gonna add that in .

And to be honest , if you let your mixture cool for 15 minutes while the vanilla was infusing , it's not that hot .

So it really probably wouldn't have burnt your eggs .

Our delicious mixture is ready to go back into the pot .

So grab a strainer , preferably a fine meshed one .

Those vanilla pods have a lot of stringy fibrous nonsense .

We're gonna pour this right back in .

Look at those beautiful vanilla beans .

Don't waste any of them .

I am just gonna use my little quarter cup to push through some of the last vanilla beans .

I wanna save them all .

And by the way , I feel like I , I've been saying vanilla , vanilla , vanilla , vanilla , but you don't have to use vanilla to flavor this .

So skip it and you could add other things towards the end .

So I've made uh a passion of Fruit pastry cream .

That's actually part of the book , the book recipe .

I've made chocolate pastry cream .

There's so many different varieties of flavors you can use for this custard .

Once again , we need our narrow whisk .

A regular whisk will work too , but it's gonna be a little bit more problematic and we're gonna take this on to medium high heat and you're gonna watch it like a hawk because it can go from perfect to burnt in a second .

So just be careful , I'll show you how to do it .

Two things are happening here .

One , you're heating up those egg yolks , so those proteins are unfolding so they can lock together and thicken your sauce .

So it's gonna be amazing .

And the egg yolks have Amy in them .

It's an enzyme that breaks down starch .

You have it in your saliva too .

That's how you can eat bread .

But the egg yolks would break down the corn starch we added and it wouldn't have that nice silky texture .

So we need to heat that up to destroy the Amal .

So we don't want to step away from this because nothing happens , nothing happens .

It's done .

It happens very quickly .

So whisk whisk whisk , you're not gonna be here that long .

You're gonna notice a change in consistency .

It'll become thicker .

That's when you know it's done .

And I wanted to have this narrow whisk because it can get all the way into the corn of my pot because that corner is a place where Burt stuff can happen really easily with a big balloon list .

So look right now , it's already thickening up and you can see it's jumping away from the pan .

You see little burps .

That means it is done .

Look at that .

Oh my gosh .

Do you see this amazing concoction ?

And you'll also notice it's not lumpy .

It's silky smooth for added richness .

I'm popping in a tablespoon of butter .

We're just gonna whisk that in until it's melted and it helps thicken things up and changes the consistency to be really silky .

I didn't spend all this time and waste all these ingredients to have any lumps .

So we're gonna pull that sieve back out .

I rinsed it out and this gets poured right back in .

Chances are it's probably fine .

So you could consider this an optional step .

This consistency is really nice , by the way , a lot of times people don't tell you that you can and cook your pastry cream for a little bit after it thickens up just to help give it some strength , which is great when you're doing something like Boston cream pie .

Literally anything where it has to hold its shape because if it's too runny and thin , it just gonna push that through yourself if I'm using my spatula .

And the goal here is just to capture any bits of egg that hardened up a little bit too much , which can happen so easily , especially if this is your first time making pastry cream .

So go ahead and consider this a mostly non optional step .

This creme peer looks so beautiful .

Really .

You could just eat this by the spoonful right now and be completely content .

So if I was filling up a pastry tart or something like that right now , I would just let this come to room temperature and I would cover it with plastic just like this .

So there's no skin formed .

You want the plastic to make really good contact and not have any exposed bits because those can get a little bit hard if you don't use plastic , just let the skin form cover it on top with something else .

You can eat the skin later .

It's delicious .

Your pastry cream can be made 24 hours in advance .

Just let it sit in the fridge .

I'm gonna chill this so you can see how to wake it back up because it's a little bit upsetting when you take it out of the fridge and it stumps a lot of people .

So into the fridge , you go , if you wanna lighten up this luscious concoction of milk , eggs and sugar , go ahead and whip up some heavy cream until stiff peaks form .

Then fold that into your pastry cream .

I recommend adding about a cup for this batch and that'll still let you maintain the structure of the pastry cream .

It won't get too loose .

You can add a little bit more and it'll still be good for filling things like cream puffs and a Clare .

It's really lovely and it's called Diplomat Cream .

Once your creme is nice and chilled , it's ready to use .

So let's grab it from the fridge .

What is this ?

It looks like it's hardened too much .

Should you be worried ?

No , that's just what happens when you chill it .

It's actually a good thing .

Grab a whisk , just give it a quick mix and you're gonna see all those lumps are gonna disappear and you'll be left with a thick luscious pip mixture just like that .

I actually gonna use this to fill some Eclairs tomorrow as a special weekend of treats , but I have to show you how this pipes you can use pastry cream for all sorts of decorative flourishes and it is gorgeous .

I love seeing it swimming with all those vanilla seeds and if you were making a Mil Foy , you actually want to see the pastry cream and it has to be a bit thicker .

Look at that so pretty .

I'm in love just like the best thing ever .

Man .

You taste the milk in the most lovely , delicate way with that vanilla and the mouth feel is so beautiful .

I hope you get a chance to make this recipe .

And if you like this video , check out my French playlist .