Chocolate pastry cream: a pure magic recipe to know by heart
It’s hard to hate chocolate pastry cream with its rich chocolatey flavor and super silky texture. Think of it like the best possible chocolate pudding.
While it’s not quite as rich as the filling in the best chocolate pie, it’s thick enough to pipe into swirls and dollops. Being able to do this means that you can add it to pastries and pie crusts and make them look like fancy pants bakery goods. Bake up an Oreo crust or a graham cracker crust in any baking form you have on hand or bake up some squares of puff pastry, and just add the pastry cream, and you have a luscious dessert in no time.
The best part about chocolate pastry cream is that it’s quick and easy to make. In about 20 minutes you can have a batch chilling in the fridge. I love it when baking building blocks don’t take much time.
I cannot wait to fill Pączki (Polish Lenten donuts) with this cream in a couple weeks when we celebrate Pączki Day!
Chocolate Pastry Cream
What even is pastry cream?
Pastry cream is a classic pudding-like filling made from milk, eggs, and a little sugar and flavoring used to fill pies, tarts, and pastries like vol-au-vents, eclairs, donuts and more. While vanilla pastry cream is probably what people are most familiar with, chocolate pastry cream (crème pâtissière au chocolat in French) is also a popular flavor.
What makes chocolate pastry cream so special
- You can pipe it: Regular chocolate pudding has a softer set, meaning it is too loose to pipe. Being able to pipe chocolate pastry cream gives you a lot more options when it comes to making pies and pastries with it as a filling.
- Double chocolate flavor: with cocoa and whole chocolate in the mix, you get a deep chocolate flavor that everyone craves when it comes to chocolate desserts.
- It’s rich but not too rich: Sometimes chocolate desserts can be over the top in richness. If you’ve ever had a too big piece of a flourless chocolate cake, you know what I mean. Chocolate pastry cream is right in the middle; it has enough luxury to feel like proper chocolate dessert, but not so much that you are overwhelmed.
- Gelatin adds to the smoothness: Gelatin helps the pastry cream hold its shape when you pipe it, keep it looking awesome when chilled, but it also adds a silky quality that you won’t get from starch alone. No starchy aftertaste here!
Ingredients for Chocolate Pastry Cream
- Whole milk
- Egg yolks
- Granulated sugar
- Arrowroot starch (you can use cornstarch as well, though I prefer the texture arrowroot gives you)
- Cocoa
- Gelatin
- Water
- Vanilla extract or vanilla paste
- Chocolate chips
- Butter
The Knox gelatin from the grocery store is good here. I’m using this grass fed gelatin. Pastry chefs can get off in the weeds with gelatin talking about “bloom strength” of gelatins. Don’t worry about any of that. Just go for the Knox or the grass fed gelatin; I’ve used both, and they both work great.
Of course. 60%-70% chocolate bars (chop them up into chocolate chip sized pieces) will give you the richest flavor, though a good milk chocolate (we love Milka in our house) will make some incredible pastry cream. Most of us have chocolate chips on hand, which is why I’m suggesting them.
Equipment needed
- 1 quart heavy pot
- Whisk: a flat whisk is amazing here as it does a great job of getting into the corners of your pot while the cream is cooking.
- Fine mesh strainer
- Baking spatula or a big spoon for pressing the cream through the strainer
Basic steps for making chocolate pastry cream
- Bloom: Sprinkle the gelatin on top of the water. Let it sit and soften while you prep everything else. This is called “blooming” the gelatin.
- Heat: heat the milk.
- Mix: Mix the starch with the cocoa and sugar in a small bowl. Mix it well to distribute the starch and break up the cocoa lumps.
- Mix in egg yolks: Add the egg yolks to the cocoa mix. At first it will be difficult to stir, but keep stirring, and the sugar will start to dissolve in the eggs. Mix until you have a smooth flowing thickish liquid.
- Dribble: When there are tiny bubbles around the edge of the milk, dribble in a little bit of the milk into the eggs. Stir to loosen everything. Keep stirring while you dribble in as much of the milk as your bowl will hold.
- Cook: Pour the chocolate eggy milk back into the pan you heated the milk. Turn it back on medium heat and cook until the mix just starts to thicken. Never stop whisking while you do this. If you have an instant read thermometer , the mixture should be between 160 F to 170 F.
- Microwave: Microwave the water/gelatin mix just until everything is clear.
- Strain: Place the chocolate, butter, and gelatin in the bottom of a heat-proof bowl. Strain the hot milk mix through a fine mesh strainer over the chocolate. Use a baking spatula to get all the liquid through the mesh, but don’t scrape in any thick bits. Wash your strainer.
- Melt: Stir the chocolate periodically until everything is melted.
- Strain again: Pour the pastry cream back through the clean strainer to sift out any chocolate bits or bits of undissolved gelatin.
- Chill: Place a piece of plastic right on the top of the surface of the pastry cream and pop it in the fridge. If you want to chill it quicker, set the bowl inside a slightly larger bowl filled with ice and a little bit of water and place the whole thing in the fridge. The ice bath pastry cream will be ready to pipe in 1 hour. Without the ice bath, the pastry cream needs to chill for about 4 hours or up to 3 days before you use it.
Don’t skip these steps if you want to make the best chocolate pastry cream
- Add gelatin to water not the other way around: It may seem trivial, but sprinkling gelatin on top of water will keep it from lodging itself on the bottom of a cup never to dissolve. Put it on top and it will behave. Every time I’ve struggled with bits of ropy undissolved gelatin in my desserts, it was because I put the gelatin in a cup and THEN added water. Learn from my pain!
- Use a thermometer: The first few times that you make pastry cream, it can be difficult to gauge when you’ve thickened the cream enough when you put it back on the heat. You can go from done to scrambled eggs in a few seconds. The best way to stop this is to use an instant read thermometer . This is an easy to find, cheap kitchen tool that takes up no space and gives you peace of mind when you’re doing tasks like this.
- Don’t skip the straining: There are a lot of things that can make lumps in your pastry cream–the starch, the cocoa, the eggs, the chocolate, and the gelatin all have the potential of making lumpy pastry cream. If you want to pipe your cream, it is essential to strain it. It takes a little bit of time to strain everything well, but you’ll be rewarded with a smooth cream that’s easy to pipe.
What can I do with my chocolate pastry cream?
- Fill a pie: pipe swirls into a graham cracker crust or an Oreo crust. It would look incredible in these little tart pans.
- Fill a donut: Split on of these awesome baked cinnamon sugar donuts in half and fill it with some of the cream kind of like you’d do with cream cheese on a bagel. What an incredible way to gild the lily!
- Make a parfait: Layer the cream with raspberries or strawberries in a tall glass jar. Top it with a little whipped cream and some crushed up cookies for a perfect simple dessert. If you have a batch of vanilla pastry cream on hand, you can make your parfait fancier with bold stripes of filling.
- Fill a cake: Fill these mini strawberry cakes with the pastry cream instead of the whipped cream.
- Make vol-au-vents: This sounds fancy, but vol-au-vents are just little circles of puff pastry that puff up into shells in the oven that you can fill with just about anything. Filling them with pastry cream and some berries is a favorite in our house.
Chocolate pastry cream: a pure magic recipe to know by heart
- Total Time: 4 hours, 20 minutes
- Yield: 2 1/2 cups 1x
Description
Chocolate pastry cream is even more luxurious than vanilla pastry cream with the dark rich flavors of ultra smooth chocolate. The gelatin helps set the cream for easy piping and adds even more smoothness and a silky mouth feel you only get in the best chocolate desserts.
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons water (30 mL)
- 2 teaspoons powdered gelatin (either Knox gelatin or grass fed gelatin )
- 2 cups whole milk (472 mL)
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar (50 g)
- 2 Tablespoons good quality cocoa powder, such as Droste (10 g)
- 2 Tablespoons arrowroot starch (18 g)
- Pinch of salt
- 3 large egg yolks
- 2 Tablespoons butter (28 g)
- 1 tsp vanilla paste or vanilla extract
- 1 cup chocolate chips (170 g)
Instructions
Chocolate pastry cream
- Measure out the water into a small microwavable cup, and then sprinkle the gelatin over the top of the water.
Stir it with a fork briefly, and then set it aside while you prepare everything else. - Warm the milk in a heavy bottomed pot over medium low heat.
- Meanwhile, whisk the sugar, cocoa, arrowroot starch, and salt together in a small bowl.
- Add the egg yolks in and whisk to combine everything. At first, the mixture will be very thick, but keep whisking for about a minute and the sugar will start to dissolve into the eggs and the mixture will loosen up. Keep whisking until you have a smooth flowing paste.
- When you see bubbles around the edge of the milk, turn off the heat.
- Dribble a tiny amount of milk into the egg mixture and whisk to incorporate it.
- Keep whisking as you continue to dribble in a little bit of hot milk at a time. This will make sure that the eggs heat up gradually and don’t scramble.
- Once you’ve mixed in all of the milk into the bowl, pour the contents back into the pot.
- Turn the heat back on to medium and whisk continuously until the pastry cream just barely starts to thicken. It’s best to use an instant read thermometer here: the pastry cream is done when it registers between 160 F and 170 F. If you don’t have a thermometer, notice that you’ll start to feel some resistance as you whisk when the cream starts to thicken, and you’ll see the mixture look a little more opaque.
- Microwave the softened gelatin for about 30 seconds to 1 minute just until the gelatin melts into a smooth clear liquid.
- Pour the chocolate chips, melted gelatin, butter, and vanilla into the bottom of a heat-proof bowl. Set a fine mesh strainer over the bowl.
- Strain the hot thickened cream base over the chocolate. Press all the liquid through with a large spoon or a baking spatula , but don’t force through any solids.
- Wash your strainer.
- Let the chocolate sit for a couple minutes, stirring it occasionally until the chocolate is melted.
- Strain the pastry cream into another bowl through the fine mesh strainer to remove any bits of un-melted chocolate or un-dissolved gelatin. Don’t skip this step as any bits of gelatin in particular can be a major headache later if you pipe the cream.
- Press a piece of plastic wrap directly on the surface of the cream. This will prevent a gross skin from forming on the top.
- Chill the cream in the fridge for several hours or overnight. If you want to chill it quicker, set the bowl inside a slightly larger bowl filled with ice and a little bit of water and place the whole thing in the fridge. The ice bath pastry cream will be ready to pipe in 1 hour. Without the ice bath, the pastry cream needs to chill for about 4 hours before it will be cold enough to pipe.
- You can make your pastry cream up to 3 days ahead of time, keeping it covered in the fridge until use.
Stir it with a fork briefly, and then set it aside while you prepare everything else.
Set a 
Notes
Can I use cornstarch?: Of course; cornstarch is easier to find, though I prefer the arrowroot. You do you!
Boost the flavor: For a richer more chocolatey flavor, add in 1 teaspoon of instant espresso powder or 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon. You can also swap out the vanilla for 1 teaspoon of just about any spirit: spiced rum, coffee, orange, or raspberry liqueur are all particularly good.
Make it dairy free: swap in full fat coconut milk for the milk for a dairy-free version.
For a softer, more pudding like pastry cream: Omit the water and the gelatin. This style of pastry cream is no less delicious, but it will have a softer quality to it, so you won’t be able to pipe it. No matter, pop this stuff into some paczki and it will be one of the tastiest things you’ve eaten in a long long time. 
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- + 4 hours chilling time:
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Baking Building Blocks
- Method: Stovetop
- Cuisine: French
