peanut butter honey pastry cream

originally posted 11/28/22

I feel like the only appropriate pairings for this pastry cream are with chocolate cake covered in a whipped chocolate ganache OR in a donut with jam of your choice- I’m a big strawberry jam on my PB & J girl. Actually, for me it’s either strawb jam or some bougie mulberry or boysenberry jam.

OH, or brown butter chiffon cake layers, this pastry cream, banana slices, hefty drizzle of salted caramel and torched meringue. For a fluffer nutter-esque vibe. I would also accept that. But, who cares what I’ll accept- you’re the one making it… do whatever your little heart desires with it.

If you’re feeling extra, caramelize the honey in the pot until a deep amber color is achieved before deglazing with the milk and proceeding as the recipe says. It’ll add this nice smokey caramel flavor to the pastry cream that accentuates the deeper notes of the peanut butter.

Ingredients:

• 710 grams whole milk

• 60 grams honey

• 25 grams brown sugar

• 40 grams cornstarch

• 60 grams yolks (about 3 large egg yolks)

• 100 grams creamy peanut butter (SKIPPY for life!!)

• 1/2 teaspoon sea salt

Directions:

1. Place your milk and honey into a medium saucepan over medium heat.

2. While that heats up, whisk together your cornstarch and brown sugar to eliminate any lumps. Add your egg yolks and whisk together until a homogenous paste forms. You’'ll really want to aerate this for about a minute or two- not fully necessary it’ll help the milk mixture to temper in easier in the next step!

3. Once your milk mixture is at a simmer, temper into the egg mixture. To temper: ladle in a small amount of the hot milk into the egg yolk mixture, whisking to combine. Add another ladle full and repeat. Do this about 3/4 times before adding the tempered egg mixture back into the saucepan. You do this to slowly bring the egg yolks up to temp and avoid shocking/scrambling them. If the egg yolks scramble it will leave you with a grainy texture and eggy taste.

4. Once tempered add the egg yolk mixture back into the saucepan.

5. Whisk constantly to avoid scrambling. Continue to whisk until your cream begins to thicken and reaches a soft boil (a few slow popping and thick bubbles will form.)

6. At this point remove your cream from the heat and strain into your desired container. This is the final frontier to make sure you don’t have any scrambled eggy bits in your cream. Add your peanut butter & salt, immersion blend until smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender you can use a regular blender or just whisk to combine. The immersion blender though leaves you with the most perfect creamy texture.

7. Cover directly with plastic wrap. Label and date the container!

8. Use it how ever you’d like ♡

9. * If you find your PC has set too firm in the fridge, put it in the blender with the paddle to loosen it up a bit. or do it by hand with a spatula *

tyty!! enjoy ♡ kassie