somethingfoodrelated

Posts Tagged ‘pastry’

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Pastry cream.

In recipe on January 12, 2010 at 2:09 pm

Ah, pastry cream.  You are a wily one.

I’ve made pastry cream three or four different ways in my career, and I’m sure I’ll make it more ways depending on where I work and what I’m doing.  Some are strong believers in using cornstarch for thickening; others use PCP (pastry cream powder) as a supplement to their recipe.  I don’t have too much of a preference myself, although I suppose I’d stay away from using any cheats and just make it as old-fashioned as possible.

Pastry cream is such a cool component in that you can do a million things with it.  Fruit tarts?  Get some small tart shells, fruit, and pastry cream.  A layer to break up a boring cake.  A sweet addition to a trifle.  Hell, put it in a donut.

I found a small notebook from when I lived in New York City (I’ve got like three of these) that had a few recipes in it, and found this basic recipe for pastry cream.  You’ll need to have a scale, as I did not do this by volume.

You’ll need:

12 egg yolks

1 liter of milk

250g of sugar

150 g of flour

2 vanilla beans (or vanilla extract will do – get the kind with seeds in it if you can)

50 g of somewhat softened butter (NOT MELTED IN THE MICROWAVE.)

Whisk your yolks together with the vanilla extract (or scrape the two vanilla beans into the yolks and whisk).  Add the flour GRADUALLY to your yolks and whisk.  Add the milk to this concoction and whisk.  Then get a chinois or fine strainer and strain into a pot/saucepan/whatever you like to call it.

Heat this mixture up, stirring constantly, until it starts to thicken.  I would not recommend doing it on high heat, as you’ve got a better chance of burning it to the bottom of the pot.  Burnt pastry cream is a downer.

When the mixture starts to thicken and you can see it’s getting to “pastry cream status,” go just a hair longer with the heating and pull it off the stove.

Put this mixture into your KitchenAid/Cuisinart/whatever with the paddle attachment, and beat in the butter.  Start slow and work the speed up so you do not wear the pastry cream.

If you like, you can add some coffee in very small amounts to change the flavor, or a little more vanilla, or maybe a hint of chocolate syrup.  Don’t go overboard unless you’re really trying to mask the initial vanilla flavor with something else.

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Peanut butter sauce.

In recipe, technique on January 11, 2010 at 3:36 pm

I’ve held a variety of positions over the years that I’ve cooked, and it’s always great to work in pastry.  I love making desserts.  I don’t eat them that often (although it looks like I do on occasion), but I do love putting them together.  I know people will base what they order on dessert (“Well, I’m not going to eat too much, since I want to save room for dessert…”) — so it better be good.

Currently, we’re serving a dessert that uses a peanut butter sauce as a garnish — just a smear across the plate with a spoon of sauce.  This recipe works beautifully and you could put it on a sundae just as soon as you could garnish a plate with it.

Combine these ingredients:

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup water

1/2 tsp salt

2/3 cup light corn syrup

in a saucepan and bring to a boil.  Boil for one minute — that’s all you need.  Then let the mixture cool until it’s comfortable to touch.  You then add one cup of creamy peanut butter and whip it all together.

You can keep it in the fridge, and when you want to use it, microwave it on a low setting and in very small increments (~10 seconds) until it’s at the consistency you want.  Do NOT throw it in the microwave for two minutes on high.  I’d hate to clean that up.

In case you don’t know what I’m referring to about the smear, it’s pretty simple.  Take a standard tablespoon (not a measuring spoon, but an actual SPOON spoon) and get yourself a good sized dollop of the sauce.  Tap it onto the plate you’re using, off to one side (maybe “nine o’ clock” on the plate?) and with the underside (curved) part of the spoon, smear it across the plate to the “three o’ clock” side.  You might have to practice it a couple of times, but you’ll get the general idea.  Plate your cake/pie/tart on top of that, and it’ll make what you’re doing look a tad more interesting.

It really works best with white plates.  We grew up with these very dark, off-green plates which would have made peanut butter sauce look…let’s just say it wouldn’t have had the same effect.