BOSTON CREAM PIE - IT'S A CAKE!

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January is finally over - it was no friend of the Anderson family, nor of their car! But we survived the untimely end of our vehicle, and even our colorful bruises are by now almost history.

Fortunately we survived the collision - our car did not!

Time for a brand new month, a brand new car - and a brand new Avid Baker's Challenge!

This year we use King Arthur Flour recipes as inspiration, and, with January's "Panettone Muffins", we were off for a roaring start.

"Boston Cream Pie" is a classic. In 1856, Monsieur Sanzian, French chef of the Parker House Hotel in Boston, turned ye olde custard filled "Pudding Cake Pie" into an elegant dessert by adding a layer of chocolate icing.

He also dressed the sides with almond slivers, but King Arthur's and other versions do not.

This so called pie is no pie at all, but a sponge cake, filled with a layer of pastry cream, and topped with chocolate ganache. Eggy and rich as it is, it doesn't keep very long and should be eaten within two or three days (at the most.)

Having only one co-eater at home, I decided to make a smaller version with half of the Boston Cream Pie recipe, using a 7" springform pan. I also used King Arthur's highly recommended Pastry Cream (1/4 recipe.)

King Arthur apparently has a pronounced sweet tooth. The amount of sugar in the cake seems very high - I reduced it by half, and it was still quite sweet.

The original recipe suggests rubbing a piece of butter over the surface of the hot pastry cream before covering it with plastic wrap, to prevent sticking. I buttered the plastic wrap - much easier than messing around with the cream.

The smaller cake took only 40 minutes to develop a deep golden brown. The original recipe says the cake should be "beginning to pull away from the sides of the pan", but mine and other bloggers' didn't - so don't wait for that to happen, otherwise your cake will be over-baked and dry!

Massachussetts' State Dessert in all its glory!

BOSTON CREAM PIE  (for a 7" cake)

CAKE
1 ½ eggs, at room temperature
150 g (3/4 cup) sugar
½ tsp vanilla extract
85 g (3/8 cup) milk
7 g (1/2 tbsp) butter
85 g (3/4 cup) unbleached cake flour
¾ tsp. baking powder
¼ tsp. salt

PASTRY CREAM  (can be made up to 3 days ahead and stored in the fridge)
170 g (3/4 cup) whole milk
25 g (1/8 cup) sugar
1 pinch salt
½ tsp vanilla extract (or 1/8 vanilla bean)
9 g (1 tbsp.) corn starch
¾ tsp all-purpose flour
1 egg yolk
14 g (1 tbsp.) butter

GLAZE
57 g (1/4 cup) heavy or whipping cream
1 ½ tsp corn syrup
64 g (3/8 cup) chopped dark chocolate or semisweet chocolate chips
¼ tsp. vanilla extract


PASTRY CREAM:
In medium saucepan, stir together 1/2 + 1/8 cups of the milk, sugar, salt, and vanilla bean. (If using vanilla extract, add it at the end.) Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring to dissolve the sugar.

Meanwhile, whisk cornstarch, flour, and egg yolk with remaining 1/8 cup milk. Whisk some of the hot milk mixture with egg yolk to temper them. Then pour egg/milk mixture back into remaining simmering milk. (Doing this through a strainer will help prevent lumps.) 

Whisk constantly until mixture thickens

Bring mixture to a boil, whisking constantly, until it thickens. Remove from heat and strain through a fine sieve. Stir in butter and vanilla extract (if using).

Grease piece of plastic wrap and place over pastry cream (so that it touches surface of cream to prevent skin from forming.) Refrigerate until cool.







CAKE:
Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease 7" springform pan, line with parchment, and grease parchment.

Beat eggs and sugar until very thick, until batter falls from paddle in thick ribbons. Beat in vanilla.

Bring milk and butter to a simmer in small saucepan. Slowly stream it into egg/sugar mixture with engine running, and beat for another minute.

Mix dry ingredients into wet ingredients until just combined

Sift flour, baking powder, and salt over cake batter. Mix on low speed just until combined, about 1 minute.

Pour batter into cake pan, checking carefully for lumps of flour. (Remove any lumps.)

Bake cake for about 40 minutes, or until it's a deep golden brown (it's supposed to begin to pull away from sides of pan, mine didn't, so don't wait for it!)

Run a spatula or table knife around cake edges (if using a springform pan, remove rim,) and let cool in pan for 10 minutes. Turn cake out onto rack to cool completely.

Using a long serrated knife, cut cake horizontally into two equal layers. Fill with pastry cream, spreading it right to the edges. Replace the top layer.

Waiting for the chocolate glaze

GLAZE:
Melt chocolate, corn syrup, and cream together until smooth and free of lumps. Add vanilla and stir well.

Pour glaze over filled cake.

(Store any leftovers in the fridge, wrapped in plastic.)

In the meantime, we have visited the Parker House Hotel in Boston, and, of course, ordered the famous dessert. The Boston Cream Pie tasted as good, as we had hoped, and this is what it looked like, en miniature, and a little spruced up:

Boston Cream Pie at the Omni Parker House Hotel in Boston

Post updated 12/28/15

CLASSIC FRUIT TART

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A light, fruity dessert seems rather enticing, when temperatures reach almost 90 degrees.

The blueberries, raspberries and blackberries in our garden are still green - (and the poor little strawberries get "slugged" before they are ripe), but the supermarket has now berries in good quality - not that watery stuff from California.

Therefore, Hanaâ's Avid Bakers' Challenge for July couldn't have come at a better time - the Classic Fruit Tart from "The Weekend Baker".

Not ripe yet - blueberries in our garden

Abigail Dodge wrote this book for people who don't like spending hours in the kitchen, when smart do-ahead steps are possible, and the refrigerator is your friend.

Usually I follow Abby's make-ahead suggestions, but my oven was still hot from my Saturday bread baking, and I had invited a neighbor for tea.

And, really, what could be nicer than a toasty kitchen, heated from baking pitas at 550º F - when outside temperatures almost reach the 90 degree mark? (My husband only rolled his eyes...)

I made the dough, substituting a quarter of the all-purpose flour with spelt. Being a bit in a hurry, I chilled my finished dough disk only for 30 minutes, the minimum given time.

After preparing the pastry cream I rolled out the dough on a silicone mat. Soon I realized the impossibility of achieving the desired 14"-round, the dough started tearing, and there was no way to roll it around the pin without total disintegration.

Cooling the dough was not an option - my nice, practical King Arthur silicone mat was too large for the fridge. Its size made it also too difficult to flip it over the tart pan. Sweating and desperate, I searched my kitchen for anything that could help me get the dough in the right place.

Fortunately I found a metal cake platter that I could press on the dough, then flipping it over the tart pan. But not without mishap, the sharp fluted edge of the pan cut right through the dough, and the whole pain of rolling out the round to that size had been in vain - "for the cat", as the Germans say.

Skippy couldn't care less!

 Using the cut off dough pieces I pinched together a half-ways even rim, and put the tart in the oven. When I took it out, I saw with great displeasure that, in spite of all my gentle handling, the dough had opened up some ugly cracks in the bottom.

But pastry cream covers all baking sins with a layer of pure innocence, and fresh blackberries and raspberries gave the tart a pretty, cheerful look.

And the reward for all that effort? The tart was absolutely delicious, and everybody had a second helping!

Afterwards I looked through basic tart recipes (from William-Sonoma, "Fine Cooking" and "Cook's Illustrated") to see whether there were some helpful hints. Obviously a cooling time of just 30 minutes for the dough was not enough, it should have been 1 hour instead.

Rolling out the dough to a 14"-round for a 9"-inch pan seems rather unnecessary, 2 inches larger than the pan should have done it.

And in William-Sonoma's "Pie & Tart" I even found my own scribbled note: "Roll out the dough on a thin plastic cutting board, and flip it over the pan".  That's exactly what I will do the next time. Or just press into the pan with my fingers!