Cream Pies and the dreaded Creme Anglais 8-29/30-07

Today I met my match, or at least one of many. Creme anglais. It’s a thin sauce that is often made into ice cream. We had to make our pastry cream for our cream pies, as well as this former foe. The pastry cream went off with out a hitch. Then we had to deal with the creme anglais. I know of only 2-3 pairs of students completed this task properly on the first attempt. The Anglais that Gabby and I made had a slight curdled effect to it. Some students had even more trouble. Their creme anglais turned completely into sweetened scrambled eggs. Our first attempt left a fair portion of semi-grainy mush,which can be contributed to the egg yolk. Our second attempt yielded much better results. It went off with out a hitch. We came to the conclusion that we heated our milk to much in the 1st step, which affected to final product.

Our pastry creme, the stuff that is ideally piped into éclairs among many other confections, was a perfect consistency. The pie dough, that we spent most of yesterday working on, was tender, flaky and fabulous. I opted for bananas to complement my cream pies, too bad I ran out of time otherwise I would have topped the pies off with whipped cream as well. I want to flavor the pastry creme with something other than vanilla. Possibly passion fruit. Something to try when I’m feeling adventurous.—K