Italian Classic Pastry Cream
This sweet and yellow cream is very simple to prepare and in the classic recipe, it calls for the use of a few simple ingredients: egg yolks, sugar, milk, and flour, now increasingly replaced with rice starch or cornstarch. It is served as a spoon dessert or used for filling sponge cakes, cakes and tarts, cannoli, cream puffs, profiteroles, semifreddo, and various other sweet products, even cold.
Ingredients
- 500 ml Whole cow milk
- 1/2 teaspoon Pure vanilla extract or 1 vanilla pod
- Zest of 1/2 lemon
- 125 g Egg yolks (about 7 yolks)
- 130 g Sugar
- 40 g Corn starch or rice starch
Instructions
- Put a large glass bowl into the freezer for 15 minutes.
- Add the milk into a saucepan. Add the vanilla seeds and vanilla pods cut into small pieces (or the vanilla extract) and the lemon zest, only the yellow part. Heat over medium heat until it boils.
- In a large bowl, add egg yolks, sugar, and rice starch. Use rice starch to have a softer cream, and if you want it thicker, use corn starch in the same quantity. Whisk until creamy, but don't whip the mixture.
- Remove from the heat the boiling milk and pour it into the yolk mixture through a sieve, in three times, to have uniformity of density.
- Return to the stove and continue cooking over low heat, stirring constantly with the whisk.
- When the cream has thickened, pour immediately it in the cold bowl to cool quickly. Whisk the pastry cream until the temperature drops to 50 °C, below the cooking point.
- Your pastry cream is ready!