Pastry Cream (or Custard Cream) is one of the most basic filling for western desserts like cream puffs and fruit tarts.

The ingredients for making pastry cream are really simple, while the cooking process requires quite some skills and attention. 

In order to produce a perfect smooth and creamy consistency, we will need to balance the eggs, flour, and milk in this cream.

What’s pastry cream made of?

1. Egg Yolks

The reason egg yolks make custard rich and creamy is the presence of lecithin (5-8%), which is a natural emulsifier, also makes the custard sauce more stable and resistant to heat and freezing.

The more egg yolks you add, the less starch is needed to stabilize the pastry cream.

Can I use whole eggs instead of egg yolks in custard?

– The answer is yes. 

If you have to deal with leftover egg whites, you can use 1 whole egg to substitute 2 egg yolks in a pastry cream recipe. 

However, since egg whites coagulate at 60°C, egg yolks 65°C, egg whites will solidify before egg yolks. Pastry cream made with whole eggs will be more likely to have small lumps.

Pastry cream made with egg yolks would have a richer and smoother texture, but the difference would be subtle.

2. Sugar

As well as sweetening the pastry cream, the sugar also helps preserve the sauce by maintaining and stabilizing the water content to prevent or slow the growth of bacteria.

Typically, 150 to 400 grams of sugar is needed per liter of milk. However, I always think that store-bought pastry cream is too sweet.

If you like to make your custard in small batches, like I always do, you can reduce the sugar amount to 100 grams per liter of milk, which is the perfect sweetness level to me.

3. Milk

Mr He and I are not milk lovers, so I have tried to use milk, soymilk, and cashew milk to make pastry cream. All of them have been working perfectly for this recipe, with some slightly different tastes and aromas.

– How to prevent skin forming on milk?

When milk is boiled, milk proteins will coagulate with milk’s fat and form a sticky film on the top of the milk.

We can easily prevent a milk skin from forming by stirring the milk continuously while cooking and remove the milk from heat before it start to boil. 

If you have a food thermometer, you can turn off the heat once the milk has reached 70°C (158°F). Or you can simply observe the milk and remove it from heat once it steams and begins to bubble around the edge of the saucepan. 

4. Starch

Starch helps to thicken the pastry cream. It’s common for recipes to use flour, cornstarch, rice starch, or a combination of different types of starch.

Each starch can bring the custard different textures and tastes:

• Rice starch: It will make the custard soft and smooth, like a gel, with a smoother appearance. The ideal cooking temperature is 84-85 °C;
• Cornstarch: It will bring the custard a jelly-like texture, with the appearance less smoother than the rice starch custard. The ideal cooking temperature is 82°C;
• Flour: Both all purpose flour and cake flour can work. It will make the texture of the custard more sticky, the appearance is dull. The ideal cooking temperature is 90-92 °C, so you don’t need to worry about overcooking the custard, which also make the thickening process easier to control.

Personally, I like to mix cornstarch and flour at a ratio of 2:1 for a creamy and smooth texture.

5. Heavy Whipping Cream

Classic pastry cream recipes won’t have heavy whipping cream. But don’t you think that is too heavy and creamy to be a puff filling?

Therefore, I highly recommend mixing your chilled pastry cream and whipped cream at a ratio of 1:1 to create a rich yet fluffy texture!

Simply whip your heavy whipping cream until soft peaks form, then add pastry cream to whipped cream, whip them together until stiff peaks form.

Why is my pastry cream lumpy?

There are 2 possible reasons: 1. it’s not heated evenly; 2. it naturally curdles in the fridge. 

To prevent problem 1 from happening, you could simply reduce your stove top temperature to low, and keep stirring to make sure the mixture is cooked evenly.

In fact, problem 2 is not a problem at all. 

This was what happened when I directly added my chilled pastry cream to mix with whipped cream:

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I wasn’t able to fully blend them no matter how long I kept whipping the mixture.

I learned a lesson: always whisk the chilled custard until smooth before mixing it with other cream. 

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Now lets’ start!😘

How to make Pastry Cream

EQUIPMENT

• Kitchen Scale

• Small saucepan

INGREDIENTS

• 2 egg yolks
• 20 g sugar
• 10 g cornstarch
• 5 g cake flour
• 200 g milk (I used cashew milk. You can also use soymilk or coconut milk.)
• 10 g unsalted butter
• 20 g powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 200 g heavy whipping cream

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a bowl, whisk 2 egg yolks and 20g sugar until pale.

2. Add 10g cornstarch and 5g cake flour to the egg yolks, whisk until smooth.

3. In a small saucepan, bring 200g milk (or soymilk, cashew milk …) to a simmer over medium heat.

4. Use a ladle to gradually drizzle the hot milk over the egg yolks. Keep whisking while adding the hot milk, otherwise the egg yolks might be cooked and get lumpy.

5. Pour the egg milk mixture back to the saucepan, cook over medium heat, stir constantly with a spatula or whisk.

6. Once the mixture turns thickened and start to bubble, cook for 1 more minute then turn off the heat.

7. Add in 10g butter, stir until well combined.

8. Transfer the pastry cream to a shallow container (so that it cools down faster). Cover the surface with food wrap directly touching the pastry cream to prevent the formation of drying skin.

9. Cool down the pastry with an ice bath for about 10 minutes. Transfer to the refrigerator, cool for at least 2 hours before using.

10. Add 20g powdered sugar, 1 tsp vanilla extract, and 200g heavy whipping cream in a large bowl, whip until soft peaks form.

11. Take chilled pastry cream out from the fridge, whisk until smooth.

12. Add pastry cream to whipped cream, whip them together until stiff peaks form.

13. Wrap with food wrap and keep in the fridge until ready to serve. Whisk until smooth before use.

How to store Pastry Cream?

– Eat it!

Check out my strawberry cream puffs recipe. Then there’s no need to consider about how to store your pastry cream, because you will finish these cream puffs within 1 day.

Don’t have patience to make the puff cases by yourself? Another way I like to enjoy my pastry cream is to fill it into some soft bread with some fresh fruits.

If you still want to store this delicious sauce for some days, here are some tips:

1. Add in more butter.

Butter is solid when cold. Therefore, the more butter you add to the pastry cream, the more thickened and stabilized it will be once it’s cooled down.

Brushing some butter on the surface of custard sauce can also cut off the air and prevent the formation of dry skin. 

You can actually skip the butter if you are going to finish the pastry cream within 1 day. 

2. Cool down the custard immediately with an ice bath. 

It might take the cooked custard up to 1 hour to cool down naturally at room temperature.

Using an ice bath, we can cool the sauce within 10 minutes, which could effectively prevent the bacteria growth. 

3. Cover the surface with food wrap directly touching the pastry cream to prevent the formation of drying skin.

Then cover the container with a lid, and keep it in the fridge until use.