How to prepare the basic Italian Pastry Cream - Come preparare la creama pasticcera di base

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There are many ways to prepare a pastry cream, specially the amount of eggs yolks can change depending on the use. I have seen a chef making pastry cream with 35 egg yoks per 1 liter of milk! This is the basic "bakery" way to prepare pastry cream for multiple use: cakes, fruit tarts or other pastries like croissants or cream brioches or to prepare the Italian Chantilly Cream (pastry cream + sweet wipped cream, which is not to be confused with the French Chantilly Cream which is a simple wipped sweet heavy cream). This recipe is very easy and almost impossible to fail if you follow the 3 steps exactly as described here below:

Step 1 : prepare the boiling milk
You need:

750gr milk

250gr heavy cream (35 to 40 % fat)

Mix the Milk and heavy cream in a pot. Bring to a boil.

Step 2 : Prepare the flour/sugar/milk/eggs mix

You need:

200gr sugar

100gr AP flour

1 sachet of vanilla powder

4 egg yolks

Mix well sugar, flour and vanilla then pour more or less 300gr of boiling Milk/heavy cream mixture into the sugar/flour mix. Stirr very well till you get a smooth cream (not too liquid)! This is called "pastella". Add the beaten 4 egg yolks to complete the "pastella".

Step 3 : The final pastry cream mix

Pour the "pastella" in the boiling milk, cook on low heat to avoid lumps and keeping on stirring non-stop. Bring to a boil and keep boiling for one minute. The cream will get thicker. After one minute boiling, the cream is ready! Pour it all in metal bowl. Cover with a plastic foil. You can use it once it's completely cool.

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