Make this easy vanilla pastry cream (It’s just 10 minutes to dessert)
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Vanilla pastry cream is a custard of egg yolks, lightly sweetened, flavored with vanilla paste and thickened with starch into an ultra smooth dessert sauce that’s a base or filling for an infinite number of unforgettable desserts.
Anytime you want a nice pudding filling, a batch of pastry cream will get you there. Similar to the pourable custard crème anglaise, this pastry cream (known in French as crème pâtissière) is thick enough to pipe.
The best part about pastry cream is that, once you have a batch chilling in the fridge, you’re just minutes away from dessert. It’s literally the ultimate no-bake shortcut for your baking life. You can use it to fill pies, tarts, pastries, donuts or as a base for German buttercream. Days I’m short on time, if I see an pre-made cookie crumb pie crust, I’ll grab it and make a cream pie literally at the last second.
Even better is that pastry cream is easy to make, is no-bake, and requires really no fancy tools (though there’s one I’ll mention that I’ll always use though you don’t need it).
Affiliate disclosure
bakingwithtradition.com is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a way for websites to earn advertising revenues by advertising and linking to recommended products. Some of the links below are affiliate links. This means that, at zero cost to you, I will earn an affiliate commission if you click through the link and finalize a purchase.
Easy Vanilla Pastry Cream
What is pastry cream?
Pastry cream is a combination of milk thickened with egg yolks and starch into a thick custard and flavored with vanilla or other liqueurs or extracts. This custard is thicker than the pourable crème anglaise. It is used to fill pies, tarts, and other pastries.
Ingredients for pastry cream
- Milk: Use whole milk, or for a richer pastry cream, use half milk/half heavy cream or half milk/half half and half. For a dairy-free version, choose coconut milk.
- Sugar: granulated. Mixed with the starch, it will break up the starch, making it easy to get an ultra smooth custard.
- Starch: Used for thickening the custard. My version calls for arrowroot, but cornstarch is a classic choice here. You can also use potato starch (I love this when I make German Buttercream), or flour, or half cornstarch/half flour. I’ve made pastry cream with all of these choices, and they all work and have their advantages. Arrowroot is my first choice for its smoothness and distinct lack of starchy flavor.
- Salt: just a pinch to balance the sweetness.
- Egg yolks: Egg yolks also help thicken the milk and give the custard its distinct yellow color.
- Vanilla: Many crème pâtissière recipes have you use a vanilla bean because you get a rich vanilla flavor from all the seeds inside the pod. I prefer vanilla paste as it is made from whole vanilla beans but you don’t have to get messy from scraping out the beans for just one recipe. There’s also nothing wrong with good old vanilla extract.
- Butter: a little bit of butter added right at the end of cooking your pastry cream will smooth out the cream and firm up in the fridge as it cools.
Tools you need to make perfect vanilla pastry cream
- 1 qt pot: something you can stir on the stove. A heavy-bottomed pot is lovely, but I’ve made countless cream pies growing up with my Mom’s simple aluminum pots. As long as you keep whisking continuously during the thickening step, you’ll avoid the scorching that can happen in a lighter weight pot.
- Whisk: anything you have here works, though my preference is for a flat whisk. I love this thing for sauces and custards because it can dig into the corners of a pot easily.
- Bowl: anything works here; you just need something big enough to hold all the starch/sugar/salt/egg yolks and eventually all the milk.
Step by step process for making pastry cream
- Heat the milk in your pot.
- Whisk starch and sugar: While the milk heats, mix together the sugar, starch and salt in a bowl. Make sure that all the lumps of starch are broken up. The starch mixture should look like one pile of smooth powder.
- Add egg yolks: Add the egg yolks into the starch mixture. At first everything will be very stiff, but keep whisking and the mixture will loosen as the sugar dissolves. Keep whisking until the yolks become fluid and light yellow.
- Tempering the eggs yolks: When there are bubbles around the edges of the milk in the pot, turn off the heat. Slowly dribble in a little bit of milk to the egg yolks, whisking always. By adding just a little bit of milk, the egg yolks will heat up slowly without scrambling. Keep on dribbling in milk to the egg yolks until you’ve added it all.
- Thickening the pastry cream: Pour the milk back into the pot and heat it, whisking constantly. As the milk starts to thicken, whisk, scraping the bottom of the pot so that nothing scorches. As the milk gets hotter, you’ll start to notice a little resistance as you whisk. When the bubbles start to get bigger and make a distinct “bloop” sound when they pop, your custard is very close to being done. Take a spoon and dip out a scoop. The custard should sit on the spoon without running off easily. Turn off the heat.
- Add the vanilla and butter: quickly whisk in the vanilla and butter until smooth.
- Chill: Pour the pastry cream into a bowl and press a piece of plastic wrap on the surface. This will stop any kind of gross skin from forming on the top of the cream. Pop the bowl into the fridge and chill for several hours until cold.
- Use your pastry cream: once cold, you can pipe you cream, fill pastries, or just eat it with a spoon.
Tips for making the best creme patissiere
Mix the starch and sugar well: the sugar helps break up the starch molecules so they’re not clumping together. If they aren’t mixed well, you’ll likely get lumpy cream.
Just keep whisking: It doesn’t take long for the pastry cream to thicken, and it can go from liquid to fully thick in a couple seconds. If you’re not whisking all the time, the bottom can scorch or you can risk getting lumps. Hey, and as you whisk, you’ll get your arm workout in for the day in addition to perfect pastry cream.
Use the plastic wrap: I don’t plastic touching my hot food, but in this case, you really can’t skip it. The plastic wrap on the surface stops an icky skin from forming on top the cream as it cools. You’ve seen something like it before if you’ve ever heated milk and let it sit. Yes, you can scoop it off, but you’ll waste pastry cream in the process. Just use the plastic!
9 easy ways to use pastry cream
- Eat it with a spoon.
- Fill a cream pie.
- Scoop it into cream puffs or eclairs.
- Fill donuts.
- Pipe it into tart shells.
- Mix it with butter into German buttercream.
- Spread it as its own layer in a cake like this strawberry crumb cake.
- Mix it with whipping cream for homemade dirt cake.
- Make a simple trifle with layers of crushed cookies, cream, and berries.
Vanilla is just the beginning. Here’s more ideas for pastry cream variations:
- Caramel: mix pastry cream with some vegan caramel sauce.
- Chocolate: mix chopped chocolate in the hot cream to melt before chilling.
- Coffee: mix a little espresso powder into the starch and sugar.
- Not vanilla: skip the vanilla and add in a tablespoon of your favorite liqueur. Rum, amaretto, frangelico, chambord, brandy are all good choices here.
- Make it dairy-free: provided you don’t use flour as a thickener, pastry cream is naturally gluten-free. To make it dairy free, use coconut milk and coconut oil.
Easy Vanilla Pastry Cream
- Total Time: 4 hours 13 minutes
- Yield: about 2 cups
Description
Ultra smooth rich vanilla custard you can use to fill pies, tarts, pastries, donuts or as a base for German buttercream. Anytime you want a nice pudding filling, a batch of pastry cream will get you there. Similar to the pourable custard creme anglaise, this pastry cream (aka creme patisserie) is thick enough to pipe.
Ingredients
- 2 cups whole milk (472 mL)
- 1/3 cup granulated sugar (66 g)
- 4 Tablespoons arrowroot starch (36 g)
- Pinch of salt
- 4 large egg yolks
- 2 Tablespoons butter (28 g)
- 1 tsp vanilla paste or vanilla extract
Instructions
- Warm the milk in a heavy bottomed pot over medium low heat.
- Meanwhile, whisk the sugar, 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 the egg yolks lighten a little in color.
- When you see bubbles around the edge of the pot, 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. You’ll start to feel some resistance as you’re whisking.
- Stop whisking long enough to notice the top of the liquid. Once there are big bubbles that expand and pop, time 1 minute. In that minute, the pastry cream should thicken considerably. You want it to be thick enough that it will sit on a spoon and not just pour right off it. This picture is just a little bit too runny:
- Once the pastry cream has thickened well, take it immediately off the heat and add the butter and vanilla.
- Pour the cream back into the bowl you used early or another container and 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.
- You can make your pastry cream up to 3 days ahead of time, keeping it covered in the fridge until use.
Notes
- Richer pastry cream: use half milk and half cream or half and half for a fattier more rich tasting cream.
- What kind of starch?: You can use cornstarch, arrowroot, or potato starch in this recipe. My first choice is arrowroot as it produces a very silky smooth pastry cream. Still, cornstarch is great for anything you bake (as in a German puddingbrezel). I also often use potato starch in my German buttercream. You can also use half flour half starch as my Gram never failed to do for her cream pies. The point is, all starch works here–use what you have or what your conscience dictates.
- Why the flat whisk?: I love a flat whisk as it can dig into the corners of your pot as you’re stirring better than a regular balloon whisk. Because of this, the bottom is less likely to scorch. Use a regular whisk if that’s what you have, but be sure to dig into the corners as best as you can.
- Vanilla sugar: If you’d like to use vanilla sugar, omit the vanilla paste/extract and substitute the sugar for 1 tablespoon of vanilla sugar plus 4 Tablespoons of regular granulated sugar.
- Prep Time: 3 minutes
- Additional Time: 4 hours
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Category: Baking building blocks
- Cuisine: French
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1/4 cup
- Calories: 138
- Sugar: 11
- Sodium: 54
- Fat: 7
- Saturated Fat: 3
- Carbohydrates: 15
- Fiber: 0
- Protein: 3
- Cholesterol: 106
Once you learn to make this easy vanilla pastry cream, you’ll think up a thousand ways to use it. Let me know what you’d do with your pastry cream in the comments!
