Pastry Cream (Crème Pâtissière)

This was my first time making pastry cream and it turned out great! So silky! I made raspberry pastry cream. I only made a 1/2 a batch so I added a generous tablespoon of raspberry preserves. I wanted it a little more flavorful so I dipped a toothpick in some some raspberry flavored oil and swirled it around my cream. It came out perfect! In the morning I'm going to whip up some cream, fold it it in and fill some cupcakes.

I absolutely love the base vanilla version of this recipe. It’s not the most straightforward thing to make, but it gets easier the more familiar you are with the recipe. I’ve made the vanilla version about a dozen times now. And I needed a chocolate pudding for a baking project and immediately thought of this recipe. I had more trouble with it than I thought. The recipe said to add the chocolate after straining the pudding into the ice bath, but I found that doing that meant that the pudding was too cool to melt all the chocolate. I ended up having to reheat the pudding over hot water (like melting chocolate) so the chocolate would melt and mix in and then put it into the ice bath again. Luckily, it didn’t affect how the pudding set. Next time I’ll probably either melt the chocolate before mixing it in, sift the pudding into a bowl and add the chocolate before putting it in the ice bath, or add the chocolate to the pot when I add the eggs.