Happy (*@#$^@# Birthday : Part II

This is a basic pastry cream, suitable for a whole plethora of things: filling eclairs, filling my raspberry tart, serving with fruit, bribing children, licking out of navels...whatever. You can also flavor it however you like: add chocolate, Grand Marnier, etc. But for this, since there's already chocolate and hazelnut in the crust, I kept it simple. Also, this is really easy and quick.


Pastry Cream. Or Creme Patissiere.

1 1/2 cup whole milk
1 vanilla bean, split -- or --
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 egg yolks from room temperature eggs
1/4 cup sugar
1 tablespoon flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1/2 pint heavy cream

Put milk in a heavy saucepan with the vanilla bean and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and set aside.

Beat egg yolks and sugar together in a medium-sized bowl until thick and light yellow. Add flour and cornstarch and beat a bit more.

Take the vanilla beans out of the milk, scrape the insides, and put the seeds back in. If there is a skin over the milk, remove it. Now, very, very slowly add the warm milk to the eggs. The milk should not be hot to the touch. Whisk like crazy while you're adding -- you don't want the eggs to cook.


Once it's all in there, put the whole shebang back in the milk pan and put over medium heat. While stirring, let it come to a boil, and then reduce the heat to a simmer (which you won't notice because you're stirring, right?) and let it cook until thickened, which will be quite quick, and then cook for about two minutes more. If you're adding flavorings or chocolate, do it now. If you're using vanilla extract, use it here also.

Pour into a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, pressing down so the plastic wrap touches the cream. Let cool for a while, and then put in the refrigerator.

Before assembly: whip the cream and fold about half into the pastry cream.

Assemble: spoon into the tart shell and smooth. Top with raspberries. Or any fruit. Except bananas.

If you want to glaze it, you can use about a 1/4 of a cup of melted red currant jam (for red fruit) or apricot jam (for orange & yellow fruit). Glaze as close to serving as possible, though: it makes the crust soggy.

A word about this tart in general: it doesn't travel. If you're planning on bringing it to a party, you're going to have to assemble it there. Just put the cream into a container or a zip-top bag, bag up the fruit, put it all in a little cooler and hit the road. Because otherwise you will just have a tartshell full of sliding goo.