The Biggest Mistake You're Making With Your Pastry Cream - Tasting Table (2024)

FAQs

Why didn't my pastry cream set? ›

Runny pastry cream most often comes from undercooking the egg yolk mixture.

When pastry cream is overcooked, the once silky-smooth texture becomes grainy and lumpy. Furthermore, the delicate flavors become muted, or even burnt. It's a heartbreaking outcome that can leave even the most meticulously crafted desserts feeling lackluster and disappointing.

Pastry cream typically calls for egg yolks, not whole eggs or whites, since, due to their higher fat content, yolks supply a fuller flavor, a richer color, and a tender, more creamy structure. Replacing yolks with whole eggs or whites results in a cream that's less flavorful and more loose in texture.

The starch in the pastry cream can cause the custard to split as it thaws out, but gelatin acts as a stabilizer.

However, if the cream is heated for too long or at too high a temperature, the eggs can become overcooked, resulting in a curdled, unpleasant texture — or even scrambled eggs in your cream. Nobody wants that.

Problem: Your Pastry is Hard and Tough

You've added too much water to the flour but not enough fat. It is important to keep the pastry cool during rolling and the oven needs to be hot.

If you're wondering how to remove lumps from a crème pâtissière, it's very easy. First, you can try to whisk it vigorously. If there really are a lot of lumps, you can blend it.

It's important that you add the hot milk slowly – this is called 'tempering' and it prevents the egg yolks from scrambling. If you added the boiling hot milk to the egg mixture all at once, the eggs would cook and curdle.

The cornstarch: This recipe makes a very firm pastry cream that, when chilled, cuts neatly — a particularly nice thing when you're using it for tarts and cakes. If you'd like a more fluid cream, use a little less cornstarch. The butter: The butter adds richness to the cream as well as body.

Cornstarch: this is used to thicken the pastry cream. The cream can be made with different amounts of cornstarch, depending on how thick you want the consistency. I definitely recommend a digital scale to measure this. Butter: I use salted butter for pastry cream since it's just a little but unsalted works fine too.

Can I reheat pastry cream to thicken? ›

Little Tips. Pastry cream will keep for several days once refrigerated. You can reheat it in the microwave, whisk hard and it becomes spreadable again.

Pastry cream has flour or cornstarch added to it and, therefore, must come to a boil in order to cook out that starchy flavor. Because of this, pastry cream is quite a bit thicker and more pudding-like than anglaise.

Lumps can happen if you don't stir the filling continuously while cooking, or if the heat is too high. To prevent this, ensure that you stir constantly over medium heat until the mixture thickens and becomes smooth. You also need to gradually add the hot mixture to the egg yolks while whisking to temper them.

Using ingredients that are too cold or too hot can also lead to a broken creme. If the ingredients are too cold, they may not emulsify properly. If they are too hot, they can cause the fats to separate.

Put simply, pastry cream is a type of custard. Adding cornstarch to the vanilla custard will give you a thick, firm substance (almost like vanilla pudding) that will hold its shape when piped. Custard that you can pour, which is only thickened with eggs, is actually called crème anglaise.

The egg yolks and cornstarch both serve as thickeners. Increasing the cornstarch is probably the most practical way to make that recipe firmer; try 5 tbsp as a start. (You could instead increase the amount of egg yolk; this will give you a more solid texture, rather than just a thicker one.)

If you notice lumps beginning to form in a custard, immediately pour it out of the hot pot into a bowl and pulse it with a handheld blender in five-second intervals until it is nearly smooth. This can take from 15 to 45 seconds, depending on how big the lumps are.

The most secure way is to throw it out and make another batch, this time boiling so that it blubbs for at least a minute. If you really want to save it, just use another thickener. In pure custards, I tend to add starch if they don't turn out.