Vanilla Pastry Cream

Vanilla pastry cream can be used in profiteroles, or cream puffs, Napoleons, eclairs, tarts, and Genoise cake. The use of crème patisserie is limited only by your imagination; grace a simple or an elaborate French dessert recipe with it. The results will be equally delicious. I made this creme patisserie for some profiteroles I made and it was great:-) sweet, smooth and perfect consistency for use with pastry. I think next time I will substitute the vanilla essence for real bean extract tho for a little more flavour but it still tasted great. I will never buy custard again after making this.

• Ready In: 15 mins
• Yields: 1 standard pastry

Ingredients

• 1 1⁄4 cups  whole milk
• 3  egg yolks
• 1⁄4 cup granulated sugar
• 1⁄8 cup all-purpose flour
•  pure vanilla extract
• 2  tablespoons cornstarch
• 2  teaspoons cornstarch

Directions

1. In a small saucepan, warm the milk over low heat until it is just hot enough to steam. While the milk is warming, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar, flour, and cornstarch until the mixture is completely smooth.
2. Once the milk is steaming, add half of it, whisking constantly, to the egg mixture. Add the milk and eggs back into the hot milk, continue stirring, and heat it for 1-2 minutes, until the custard reaches 170*F. on a digital thermometer and is very thick. Remove from the heat, stir in the vanilla extract, and chill 1 hour before filling pastry. Chill :1 hour.
3. My Note: *No cornstarch! Had to ""do over"" Hope it tastes good when cool. I am a very fussy person when it comes to pastry cream.
4. I made the recipe exactly as written and it is really good but when the cream was chilled it was so firm that I was able to stand a spoon upright in it. I too will leave out the corn starch the next time I make it. I much prefer a softer cream --.
5. I have made this vanilla cream many, many times but I add 2 more egg yolks and when it is almost ready to use I add 50 grms of butter. please taste it and enjoy.
6. Cornstarch not needed and I substituted the vanilla flavoring with almond flavoring.