Pastry Cream

The foundation for many dessert creams

One of the most important recipes in vegan any dessert making is pastry cream (in French: crème pâtissière).

Traditional pastry cream contains milk, sugar, egg yolk, cornstarch, vanilla, and butter.

Vegan pastry cream is made with non-dairy milk🙋‍♀️, sugar, agar, flour, cornstarch, vanilla, and vegan butter🍴.

While agar agar powder🛒 is a fine replacement for egg yolk when it comes to thickening, there are two optional ingredients that can help with other aspects.

1. A tiny pinch of kala namak (black salt)🛒 adds a whiff of je-ne-sais-quoi egginess that offers an extra hint of gourmandise.

2. A pinch of turmeric creates a golden hue.

How to make vegan pastry cream

See the pastry cream recipe🍴 for ingredients and straightforward instructions. Come back here for more detail and photos.

The best pastry cream is made with a vanilla bean gently cooked in milk for 15 minutes, but vanilla essence is a perfectly fine substitute.

When the milk is hot (and vanilla bean removed, if using), add the dry ingredients and cook for several minutes until the cream is thick and smooth, with no hint of powder when you taste it.

Pastry cream is starting to thicken - trade the whisk for a silicone spatula

Once the cream is fully cooked, remove it from the heat and gradually stir in pieces of cold butter🍴 until it’s fully incorporated and the cream is thick and glossy.

Cooked pastry cream

Let the cream cool for 10 minutes, then cover* and refrigerate for an hour.

Pastry cream covered with silicone baking mat

Once chilled, the pastry cream will be firm enough to cut. So there’s one more step before you can use it.

Chilled vanilla pastry cream that you can cut

With a sturdy silicone spatula🛒, work the cream thoroughly, pressing against the sides of the bowl and stirring until it’s smooth and creamy. Et voilà!

Your vanilla pastry cream is ready to use

Use plain (vanilla) pastry cream in crêpes, éclairs, fruit tarts, and mille feuilles. Or you can flavor it with chocolate, coffee, citrus, nut paste, liqueur, rum ….

In addition, vanilla pastry cream is the basis for several other essential creams:

• crème chiboust (pastry cream + Italian meringue)

• crème diplomate (pastry cream + whipped cream)

• crème frangipane (pastry cream + almond cream)

• crème légère (pastry cream + small amount of whipped cream)

• crème mousseline (pastry cream + additional butter)

• crème Tropézienne (pastry cream + buttercream)

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* This is to avoid a skin forming on top, and the traditional way to do this is with plastic wrap pressed directly onto the surface of the cream. But I prefer reusable products whenever possible, so I use a silicone baking mat🛒 instead.