Vanilla Pastry Cream

We made pastry cream, or crème pâtissière, today.  I adapted the lemon crème recipe in the Splenda book to make a vanilla pastry cream similar to what we created in class by replacing the lemon flavor with vanilla extract and making up the liquid from the lemon juice with water.  I scratched the make up from the Splenda book and used the procedure outlined for Gisslen's pastry cream.  It's interesting that Gisslen's pastry cream recipe uses milk and butter, whereas the Splenda recipe uses only water and no butter.


I plan to use the Splenda pastry cream to fill some eclair (and cream puff) shells that we made in class.  The pâte à choux (batter for eclairs and cream puffs) has no sugar in the recipe (moreover, there is no sugar content in eclairs, unless you use the optional milk). So there's no need to make a low sugar version. Eclair shells are already sugar free!

Here's the recipe for vanilla pastry cream:
yields about 1 cup

2 T cornstarch
1/4 c (7.5 g) Splenda
1/4 c (52.5 g) sugar
5 large egg yolks (85 g)
1 c (227 g) water
1 T vanilla extract

Make up: Sift together sugars and cornstarch.  Beat the egg yolks with a whip and add the sugar mixture.  Beat until smooth.  Temper the egg mixture by slowly beating in the hot water in a thin stream.  Return the mixture to the heat and bring to a boil, stirring constantly.  The mixture should be thick.  Continue stirring until slightly cooled.  Then add the vanilla.  Transfer to a clean shallow pan (for quick cooling) and cover with plastic wrap directly in contact with the surface of the cream to prevent a crust from forming.  Cool and chill as quickly as possible.