Massachusetts · Dessert
Boston Cream Pie
- Advanced
- 2 h 30 m
- roughly 2 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
Leads with richness that coats and comforts, a floral thread lifting the aroma, melting away silken.
Ingredients
- For the sponge: 250g flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt, 115g butter, 250g sugar, 3 eggs, 180ml milk, 2 tsp vanilla
- For the pastry cream: 500ml milk, 6 yolks, 100g sugar, 50g cornstarch, 2 tbsp butter, 1 tsp vanilla
- For the glaze: 175g dark chocolate, 175ml cream, 1 tbsp corn syrup
The skills inside
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binderCreaming butter & sugarThe wobble & the skewer: testing a bake
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy · egg
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Make the pastry cream first: heat the milk, whisk yolks with sugar and cornstarch, temper, return to the pan, and cook to a thick boil. Beat in butter and vanilla, cover the surface, and chill.
- For the cake, cream butter and sugar, add eggs one at a time, then alternate dry ingredients with milk. Divide between two 23cm pans.
- Bake at 180C for 25 min until a skewer comes clean. Cool completely. 25 min
- Spread the cold pastry cream over one layer, thick, and set the second on top.
- Warm the cream, pour over the chocolate, add the syrup, stir smooth, and pour over the cake so it drips down the sides. Chill 30 min. 30 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Creaming butter & sugar 28 recipes
- The butter started at the right temperature: it took a fingerprint and held its shape, neither greasy and slumping nor hard from the fridge.
- It has visibly paled, from yellow towards near-white, and grown in volume, and getting there took minutes rather than seconds.
- The texture is light and aerated: a spoonful is fluffy and holds a soft peak rather than sitting dense on the spoon.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it is still faintly gritty with undissolved sugar, and not slick or oily.
- It is one homogeneous cream: not split, slackened, or separating into a greasy mass with liquid running out of it.
Where it goes wrong The butter was too warm, or it was beaten well past its point, so the fat softened and gave up the air it had taken: the mixture goes slack and oily and the cake bakes dense and greasy with a sunken middle.
Chilling to firm: the fridge as binder 48 recipes
- It went cold before it was handled any further, and it went in spread flat and covered rather than as a warm mass that insulates its own centre.
- It is cold through rather than cold at the edge: tested at the middle it is as firm as it is at the rim.
- It holds its shape unsupported; it can be cut, portioned, rolled or lifted without slumping, tearing, or sticking to the hands.
- The fat in it has gone solid: it feels firm and waxy to the fingers rather than greasy and yielding.
- It survives the step it was chilled for, going into heat or a coating or a mould still holding its form rather than collapsing the moment it is touched.
Where it goes wrong It was given twenty minutes instead of the hours it needed, so it is firm at the rim and soft at the core: it slumps out of shape as it is portioned, and everything made from it spreads or breaks apart in the pan.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Banyuls or Ruby Port
- Also Right
- PX Sherry
- From the Taps
- Imperial stout
- Zero-Proof
- Espresso
Chocolate wants fortified sweetness or roast-bitter contrast: the wine must out-sweet the plate, or oppose it entirely.
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