Chocolate pastry cream

17/11/2023

Chocolate pastry cream is a delicious variation of the classic pastry cream, enriched by the intense flavor of chocolate. Here’s how to prepare it:

Ingredients

500 ml of whole milk
4 egg yolks
100 g of sugar
40 g of cornstarch (cornflour)
100 g of dark chocolate
1 vanilla pod or a teaspoon of vanilla extract

Preparation

Start by heating the milk in a saucepan, together with the seeds scraped from the vanilla pod or the vanilla extract. Bring almost to a boil.
Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk the yolks with the sugar until you get a light and frothy mixture. Add the sifted cornstarch and continue to stir until you get a smooth and homogeneous mixture.
When the milk is hot, pour some into the mixture of yolks and sugar, stirring quickly to temper the eggs. Then, pour everything back into the saucepan with the rest of the milk.
Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until the cream starts to thicken. Make sure to stir well at the bottom to prevent the cream from sticking.
Once the cream reaches the desired consistency (it should coat the back of a spoon), turn off the heat.
Add the dark chocolate chunks to the still hot cream and stir until completely melted and integrated into the cream.
Strain the cream through a fine sieve to remove any lumps and attain a smooth and velvety texture.
Transfer the cream to a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap, making sure the wrap directly touches the surface of the cream to prevent a skin from forming.
Allow to cool at room temperature before refrigerating. Once cooled, your chocolate pastry cream will be ready to be used in various ways: to fill sweets, as a base for spoon desserts, or simply enjoyed on its own.

Curiosity

Pastry cream is a very versatile preparation in baking, and the chocolate variant makes it particularly suitable for filling cream puffs, éclairs, cakes, and mille-feuille. In Italy, you can find this cream as the star in many traditional desserts and it is often used as a filling for the famous “Setteveli” cake, which alternates layers of chocolate cream with sponge cake and hazelnut crunch.