Orange Pastry Cream. Recipe features fresh orange juice, fresh orange zest, and vanilla bean paste. Perfect for filling cakes, tarts, pies, and doughnuts. Whisk this orange pastry cream together with whipped cream to fill eclairs and cream puffs.
Crème patisserie. Pastry cream. In this case, orange pastry cream, is an amazing base, as well as a delicious accompaniment to many desserts. It’s also perfectly good off the end of a whisk.
This is an excellent recipe to learn as it has many applications. Not only that, the cream is prepared using milk, eggs, sugar, vanilla, cornstarch and/or flour. All ingredients usually kept on hand.
This cream is a key component in delicious French pastries like éclairs, mille-feuille and profiteroles. The cream can be combined with whipped cream, resulting a more delicate texture, and lighter filling.
Pastry cream is used for fillings in tarts, flans, cakes and more. I love to use pastry cream between layers when I assemble layer cakes.
As a tartist, I’m a huge fan of Flan parisien. The flan parisien is a simple custard tart with a puff or short crust base. The pastry shell is filled with pastry cream and baked until a golden crust has formed. The tart is usually chilled and served cold.
The trick is to properly combine your ingredients to achieve the right texture and consistency. The rich cream should be thick and smooth.
Whole milk is infused with flavor, a little vanilla and orange citrus zest. Egg yolks are whisked together with sugar until the mixture has increased in volume and becomes foamy. Cornstarch and/or flour is whisked in to the sugar mixture. The egg mix is tempered with a small amount of hot milk to slowly increase the temperature of the eggs without changing their texture. The creams temperature is raised slowly while stirring constantly, until it achieves the desired thickness. Additional flavorings can be added in at this point. The cream is strained to ensure smoothness, and chilled to thicken further.
Very versatile, this cream can be flavored by infusing the milk when simmering, or whisking in when the cream has come together. Since the cream is strained, any bits not wanted in the final product are left behind. Coffee, chocolate, nut butters and pastes, fruit purees, juices and zests, herbs and spices are some of the ways to take your pastry cream to another level.
Orange Pastry Cream
Ingredients
- 500 grams whole milk (2 cups)
- 5 grams vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste (1 teaspoon)
- 12 grams fresh orange zest (2 tablespoons)
- 80 grams egg yolk (4 large)
- 100 grams granulated sugar (1/2 cup)
- 35 grams cornstarch (1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon), sifted
- 45 grams fresh orange juice (3 tablespoons)
- 14 grams unsalted butter (1 tablespoon)
Instructions
- Add whole milk, vanilla extract, and fresh orange zest to medium saucepan. Heat just until simmering over medium heat.
- Meanwhile, add sugar, egg yolks, and sifted cornstarch to medium mixing bowl. Whisk to combine. Don’t worry that it is very thick.
- Temper the egg mixture with the milk mixture by adding 1/4 cup of warm milk to the egg mixture while whisking briskly to incorporate. Repeat this step several times. Add tempered egg mixture to saucepan with remaining milk mixture.
- Heat over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture thickens (170 F., if using a thermometer). Remove from heat.
- Strain the pastry cream through a fine mesh strainer into a clean bowl. Stir in butter and fresh orange juice.
- Transfer to airtight container and refrigerate to chill.
Find Tartistry on: Pinterest Instagram and Facebook. Please feel free to leave comments and questions below. I would love to hear from you.
