In The Kitchen: Pastry Cream Creations

Just over a week ago, my family and I went berry picking.  It was our second time this summer.  We would go every week if we could, but that would just be a bit crazy with our five kids.  There is something about picking berries that is enjoyable and playful.  I love watching our buckets fill up and the kids pretending they are not eating tons of the berries in the process.

When we made it home with two buckets full of raspberries and one and half buckets of blueberries I felt like we would never have to buy fruit again.  We had these berries on oatmeal, as snacks, in smoothies.  I considered making jam, but fresh berries are just so good.

As the week went on we moved berries to the freezer, but there is something I had to make first.  I love fresh berry tarts with pastry cream.  Now usually I use heavy cream, but I found a recipe in my Bosch cookbook that intrigued me.  I had no idea how much cream I would have by the time I finished this, but I knew it would make more than one pie.  I changed up some of the ingredients based on what I had in the house.  Here is what I used:

4 cups raw milk
1 1/2 cups organic cane sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
12 egg yolks
6 tbsp tapioca starch
1/4 cup butter

I mixed this all together starting with some milk and tapioca starch.  Then whisked the egg yolks and mixed the first and the next step together with sugar.  Then one mixes the rest of the ingredients over low heat, but I did not let my mixture thicken.  I put it in my first set of mini pies too soon thinking it would set, but it didn't .  The easy fix for this was baking the pies in the oven.  It worked perfectly.  I still had about six cups of this stuff left over after my first batch of pies.

Now to cut out some calories, I just baked the custard and had it with blueberries.  This was a nice treat, but by the next three cups of this cream, I wanted to try something else.  The best summer treat ever is ICE CREAM!  I had a bunch of raspberries, about two and half cups mashed up.  I cooked them a bit with about 1/2 cup of sugar and a tablespoon of sugar.  Then to make it more interesting I  added a tablespoon of raw cocoa.  Then I thickened the pastry cream in a pan over medium heat.  When this was done both the raspberries and the cream were combined and placed on the counter to cool a bit.  I moved it to the fridge and waited.  This process started around ten in the morning and I did not attempt to freeze the mixture until around one in the afternoon.

Make sure to use a metal bowl in the freezer, the ice cream will freeze faster.  It still takes almost three hours, but it was worth it.  Once in the freezer one needs to mix the ice cream every thirty minutes until it starts to look thicker, like soft serve.  Then just leave it in the freezer a bit longer to actually resemble ice cream.  I would say the texture of my raspberry chocolate pastry cream was more like rich gelato.  It was really good.  To add to the flavor, my friend Cory has this fudge sauce on her cooking website that I love.   http://freshisthetaste.com/hot-fudge/  Make this sauce at least once and you will thank me.