Italian Pastry Cream (Crema Pasticcera)

This is an easy and quick recipie to prepare pastry cream for cakes, fruit tarts or other pastry like croissants or cream brioches. In this recipie I use lemon instead vanilla flavour but you can use a vanilla seeds to replace the lemon if you like. It is very important to use full fat milk for this preparation.

Ingredients :

• 500 gr. of full fat milk

• 2 eggs

• 65 gr of pastry flour

• 100 gr of white fine sugar

• 2 small pieces of lemon peel

Instructions:

Place the sugar and the lemon peel in a food processor and mix till the sugar is powdered. Add the other ingredients and mix at low speed just for few seconds. Put the mixture in a pan and cook at low heat till boiling, you need to continuously stir the mixture with a wire whip to avoid lumps. When boiling keep on stirring and low the heat at the minimum.

Cook till the cream gets thicker, must have a custard density. If you cream gets lumpy, just mix it very shortly in the food processor. Place the cream in a bowl and cover it with plastic wrap to avoid that the top dries up. Let it cool then use it as you like. Buon appetito !