Pastry Cream on Kitchen3N

Chocolate Pudding or Pastry Cream

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I had a revelation this week: pastry cream is basically pudding, with perhaps an egg yolk or two more. Both start off with a milk/sugar base, thickened over the stove top using some combination of cornstarch/flour/egg yolks then flavored with vanilla, chocolate or any other flavor of choice. This recipe, in my opinion, can pass for both.

Green Tea Wafer Cake

Thu, 25 Jan 2018 00:00:00 +0000

If it looks like a green tea crepe cake, it smells like a green tea crepe cake, and tastes like a green tea cake, it still may not be a green tea crepe cake. Truth is, I've never had a green tea crepe cake. And even though this looks like the famous Lady M green tea crepe cake, there are no crepes here. Just crisp wafers made with my trusty krumkake maker, matcha pastry cream and whipped cream. I didn't use any one recipe for this - I kind of threw things together that I thought might work. And while this worked out beautifully (though I did have a near disaster when the whole thing almost slid off as I was transferring it to the fridge! Pastry cream is slick, yo), I'm already dreaming up alternate versions of this: nutella swiss meringue buttercream filling? Salted caramel mousse? Matcha used to be difficult to find - now you can find it at costco! I don't use it that frequently so I'm still working off of the batch I bought a while ago. Hope you enjoy! And if you don't have a krumkake maker and don't feel like buying one and make it with crepes instead, please let me know!

Pastry cream recipe adapted from King Arthur Flour.

Chocolate Pastry Cream (Chocolate Pudding)

Mon, 17 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

There’s a story behind these plates: we got them for free from our last CB2 purchase. I’m assuming because no one else would buy them. There are like 4 of them, all rectangular appetizer plates with quirky stick figure/food illustrations. This is the first time I busted them out. Somehow the bite taken out of the cream puff worked perfectly with this ugly little dude. I was inspired to bake these delectable cream puffs after purchasing Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspan. There’s so much goodness in this book. I was surprised at how much Moroccan cuisine permeated French food culture (as interpreted by Greenspan). The result is a multitude of really promising mezze/hors d’oeuvres, salads and other veg-centric dishes. The cream puff is made from a standard pate a choux recipe (minus one egg) - serving only as a vehicle for my silky smooth chocolate emulsion. Once I made and chilled the pastry cream, I started it eating it by the spoonful. I couldn’t help myself. That’s when I realized pastry cream is barely different from the more conventional pudding. Not the type of puddings that are thickened by just cornstarch, rather the ones that are thickened (and thus made more rich) by egg yolks. It’s great as a stand alone dessert. I piped these into the cream puffs using a pastry bag fitted with a long tip.