Simple Cake Fillings: Amazing Possibilities

1. Welcome!: Are you looking for? A way to take your cakes to the next level? Then this course will really help. I'm gonna show you three basic types of fillings will take a look at fruit fillings, pastry cream and moves. You can add so many different flavors, including herbs, spices, jam, powders, liquor. There are a lot of options, and you'll be able to create endless possibilities for all of your cakes to impress friends , family and have more options. Toe. Offer your clients. I'll walk you step by step through the methods so you can comfortably learn the techniques you need to know to create these basic types of cake fillings. So let's get started. I'll see you in the next lesson. 2. Equipment: in this Wilson. I just want to go over the basic equipment that it would be convenient toe have to complete all of the recipes in this course. First, we'll start off with just a variety of mixing bowls. I have different sizes, and these were just nice to have your muse on Plast ready to go. Measure out all of your ingredients before you get started on a recipe. I also have a stand mixer back here, and I have a paddle and a whisk attachment. Now, if you have a hand mixer that works find too. But something electrically powered is really going to help you out. Ah, big important item that I always use for my feelings is a fine mesh strainer. Now, you really want to make sure that you're looking at the size of the openings and they should be pretty small, especially for fillings, because you're going to be dealing with gelatin on egg that cook it lumpy or coagulate. And you really want to make sure that you get all those bits out before you would put it in the cake or serve it. I also have a variety of measuring equipment. I have a scale. Just a small digital kitchen scale, some dry measuring cups, liquid measuring cup and measuring spoons. Also going to be using a candy, A thermometer in this course. So I have this. You can just pick these up at the grocery store that really easy to find fairly inexpensive . Have a regular old hand whisk, which is gonna be great for folding things in or mixing things on the stove by hand. Which leads to having a nice This is just a small stainless steel saucepan. The size is plenty big because, honestly, I don't ever make batches of fillings that would not fit in that pot. So a small one will dio. I also have a rubber spatula. Just have a few of these on hand ones that are nice and flexible, but they're still sturdy enough. You're gonna be able to get in around all the edges in the bowls and mixed ingredients together. Now I have a greater micro. Planes are best for getting Citrus chest, but if you only have a greater that's fine, just really pay attention when you're existing, so that you're only getting the outside colored part of the rind and not the white bitter part. And lastly, I have just a nice big cookie sheet with parchment paper on it. And that's going to be for the goodies that we make later on in the course, because those will be baked in the oven, paling, pecans and streusel. So this is just a very basic equipment set up, and most of this you'll probably already have some things that might you might not have that I would definitely recommend. Getting are the kitchen scale, the Canada thermometer and the fine mash strainer most everything else you can get away with if you don't have it and the mixer as well. You really wanna have an electric powered mixer? That's it for this lesson. I will see you in the next. 3. Ingredients: with this lesson. I want to talk to a little bit about ingredients. Not so much the basic ingredients, like whole milk, heavy cream or butter that are going to make up a lot of the recipes in the course I want to talk to you about flavorings. This is something that I always try to teach or convey in a way that really gets you to be creative. I have just a random selection of different types of flavorings that you could add to your fillings. So when I mentioned things like Oh, you could add powders, fresh herbs to ah, moose. This is what I mean Here I have some fresh basil and a little bit of fresh rosemary. Now have growing these myself. They have just been sitting on a window. So in my home, and I like to use fresh herbs wherever I can, not just in savory cooking, but I m baking as well. So with fresh herbs you don't need a measurement. You can add them to literally anything just to taste, and I recommend that you try it because fresh herbs have more of a flavor punch than dried herbs and more. They're more true to flavor than dried herbs, and they really had uninterested in note to fruits. I like to mainly pair them with fruits, especially herbs and Citrus. Go really nice together, or Berries and spices go really fantastically together. I also when I mentioned powders. This is that. I mean, I just have an espresso powder instant espresso powder. And you can add this to any type of liquid at the stage in your recipe where it something would be a liquid added and then let it dissolve, and you can really pack a powerful coffee flavor into a recipe. You can also use fresh fruits. This is just a honey crisp apple, which we're gonna be making an apple. Com Pote and you'll see how to process the apple to get really nice small dice and get it prepped for the apple compote. But you can always add fresh fruit and mix it just lightly into a pastry cream and layer that in a cake or dessert. But you can choose really any fresh fruit and layer it into filling. Just fold it right in and you get a really nice contrast. You get that burst of sweetness or sour Whatever type of fruit you're using on, that's really interesting. Other types of fruit that you can use. You can use a jam. This I just have, Ah, organic raspberry jam seedless, and this. I could just start into a pastry cream on Get a fruit flavored pastry cream. I could fold it into a moose. You know you have different options there with jams, and what's great about jams is they have a longer shelf life. So whereas fresh fruit would deteriorate something in about three days, jams are going to give you a few more days on your fillings. I also have some frozen fruit and frozen fruit I love because it's really cost effective. It's less expensive than fresh fruit. If that's something that you're concerned about, and any time you're making a cooked filling use frozen fruit. It's just a good as fresh. And like I said, you're saving a little bit of money now. I don't typically use frozen fruit for just folding into fillings simply because it's going to seep a lot. There's gonna be a lot of liquid that comes out of frozen fruit. Another thing to keep in mind is I always like to make sure that my frozen fruit is falled before I try to use it in whatever I'm going to be using it in. You can also add extracts to anything. This is just a caramel extract, and it has a dark color to it. So if you are worried about coloring something, keep that in mind. There's clear extracts you can get clear vanilla almond extract, butter extract. Those were the clear ones. Most of the other extracts have some sort of coloring to them, and you can also find liquor flavored extracts. There's brandy, rum, you know, type those types of extracts. However, you can also just add rial liquor. I have here a vanilla brandy, and this is just something I have on hand. I always have Calvados on hand. I loved to have D Serono really nice Amaretto flavor. I have Grand Marnier and I love the little bottles because obviously, if it's a flavor that you don't use a whole lot, then just get a smaller bottle. But this I like to add to anything that has an orange flavor to it, and obviously if it's going to be served for adults But it just adds that little bit of interesting flavor to something that you know really makes people wonder. What is that? What am I? What am I tasting? What did you put in here? And it's really fun. And it's even a conversation starter when you add any of these interesting combinations. So I just wanted to give you kind of a run down on, you know, different types and really, you know, think outside the box. Think of you know, well, maybe I could, you know, mix things together like blackberry and espresso That would be delicious or the caramel extract with, you know, fresh, thinly sliced apples inside of a filling. There's a lot of things that you can come up with, so I just encourage you to, you know, kind of take the time to look at different types of ingredients when you go to the store or you're shopping online and think of ways that you can incorporate them into your feelings and into your cakes in the future 4. Thickeners : this section is about thickeners. More specifically, we'll talk about gelatin eggs and start such a corn starch and flour because those were the most prevalent types of thick ners in cake fillings. Why do we use thickeners in fillings? Because it allows you to take something such as milk or fruit liquid and turn it into a more solid substance without them. Lemon Kurds cooked fruit filling, which is kind of seep out of a cake. And that's not really what we're looking for. So using gelatin in a chocolate mousse is going to help it withstand the weight of layers of cake on top of it. And the nice thing about Tickner XYZ, the larger cake, the more weight it needs to take. The more Thicke ner you can add, the 1st 1 we're gonna take a look at is gelatin, so I'll see you in the next lesson. 5. Gelatin: In this course, you learn how to use gelatin in loose and crema. Gelatin comes in two forms. Powder or sheet gelatin, now powdered, is the most readily available. You can usually just pick it up at the grocery store, but she gelatinous sometimes preferred because it has less of a surface area and you're not incorporating as much air into your mixtures, which is more important for things that you would want to be super clear and glossy, such as fruit gels. Gelatin is derived from the tissues in animals, most commonly from pigs. It's considered high gross skop IQ, which means that it absorbs and retains water and liquids easily. You start by hydrating the gelatin in cool liquids, and then that way it will hydrate the protein strands and allow them to dissolve mawr easily into whatever you are dissolving them into. If you try to dissolve gelatin in warm liquids, the outside of the Granules and molecules will swell too quickly, and they won't allow the liquid to completely penetrate to the center, and then it'll create clumps in your liquid. You always want to dissolve it in cool liquid. Even very cold liquid works as well, and then once it's dissolved and you add it to a warm liquid, Teoh, melt it into that. It starts to break up the protein strands now, as the mixture then cools. The protein strands are kind of long and street, so they'll start Teoh wrap around another. But once the mixture has been sitting for longer and it completely cools, those strands will line up together and then twists and form braids around one another. So one packet of powder gelatine will firmly set two cups of liquid. That's pretty effective. It will also set three cups of liquid soft set. When you're working with gelatin, you want to make sure that you let it set for a long period of time to fully cool. It will have a lot of effect after eight hours, but a 24 hours gelatin will have its maximum effect and will no longer think in after that . As you're working with it, do keep in mind that you don't want to boil anything with gelatine in it because it will lose some of its setting capabilities. You may hear the term bloom Ah, lot in the pastry world, and when it comes to gelatin. It's referring to the strength. Now there are ways to convert powder gelatine to sheet gelatin and vice versa, depending on what your recipe calls for and what you have on hand. There are also certain types of ingredients that don't work as well, where you need to handle in a different way. Because of this extra information, I created a guide with some helpful rules on how to work with gelatin, and it's nice and handy to just have on your computer or print off. 6. Eggs : eggs are another great type of thickener for sauces. Custard and Kurds will use them a lot. In this course. They can hold up to four times their weight in moisture. The proteins and eggs coagulate at different temperatures, and this will set a liquid. But because of this, you want to handle eggs carefully and heat them gently. Typically, egg whites will set at 149 F. Egg yolks will set a liquid at about 158 F, and whole eggs will set a liquid at about 100 and 56 F. One. Working with UM, you always want to keep the liquid or custard moving with a whisk or a spatula, and that will really help prevent them from scrambling. You don't want scrambled eggs in your custard. And as a general rule of thumb, one egg and two tablespoons of sugar will set about a cup of milk if you're using different parts of the egg as substitutes, 1.5 egg whites is equal to one whole egg and two yolks are equal to Ah hole eg. Keep in mind that if you're using egg whites in a recipe, and you have a lot of left over egg yolks. Egg yolks freeze really well. I just put them in a resealable bag and then marked the bag with how maney egg yolks are in that bag. Problem in the freezer, and they're good for a couple months. You can pull them out whenever you need to make a custard. The majority of custards and Kurds are based off of egg yolks, but you will see some recipes that have whole eggs incorporated. It's very rare to see a whites used as a thickener. Mainly, they're used for a rating something like a moose or pastry cream, but in this course will actually take a look at using both yolks and whole eggs. 7. Starch : the most common types of starches that are used in cake fillings are flower, typically all purpose or corn starch. Why you starches as thickeners? They actually give things such as puddings or pastry cream. Ah, more full body texture. They also slow the coagulation of proteins, which somewhat makes them resistant Teoh over cooking or overheating. When making custard. With start as a thickener, you do want to ensure that you cook it enough. It may look thick on the stovetop, but then it could break down in the refrigerator. So you want Teoh. Make sure that you simmer it for at least a minute on the stovetop. I'll show you how I cook mine, and it typically looks pretty thick before I remove it from the heat, and I just make sure that it's not going to break down in the refrigerator over a few days time. Also, when you cook it like that, there is a tendency to overcook the eggs a little bit, so I always pass it through a strainer just to make sure that it's a smooth and delicious pastry. Cream. Flour and cornstarch also are not equally interchangeable within a recipe, so whatever arrest p you're using. If you find one online and want to try it out, then I recommend using the type of starch that it calls for because it's been specifically tailored to that type. 8. Fruit Fillings : fruit fillings are incredibly refreshing inside of a cake, and they pair really well with other flavors. Strawberries and chocolate cake, banana and cinnamon and caramel. Now, with fruit fillings, you could slice fresh fruit and put those in between layers of cake. You can also use gyms, jellies, or what we're gonna learn in this section is cooked fruit fillings. I'm gonna show you in the next method how to make an apple com Pote, which cooks down to a nice thick filling that'll stand up inside of a cake. Then the following lesson. I'm gonna introduce you to a instant, Clear Joe. Now it's a type of thickener that you can add directly to fruit, and it instantly thickens it. You don't have to cook it, and it stores for a really long time. In general, fruit fillings are best eaten within seven days and captain the refrigerator. You can also frees them up to six months, which is fantastic if you're freezing cakes, hole for a later date, or you can make your fillings and freeze them and keep them to use in multiple cakes in the future. A couple things to keep in mind when using fresh fruit for filling. You also wanna have some other type of filling encasing the fresh fruit because it's dry, so cake on fruit on cake. It's not gonna hold your cake together. So when you slaves that the layers will come apart, we don't want that so putting it in amongst other cream pastry cream, whipped cream. Anything about nature is best for fresh fruit, and it'll keep well for up to three days. So strawberries, bananas for a princess cake. You have a three day shelf life on that cake before the fruit starts to break down and not look and taste as fresh. Luckily, in this course, you're gonna learn how to make other fillings that will go great encasing that fresh fruit . The lovely thing about fruit fillings, too, is that you don't have to just use one fruit. You could makes multiple types of Berries. You can even add herbs to your fruit fillings. Spices extracts beings to boost the flavor. Always looking for new ways had extra flavor into a cake, because I think it's so interesting and kind of surprising. People don't really expect it, so just think about that. Think of some interesting flavors that you can add to your fruit fillings 9. Apple Compote Method: the first step to starting com Pote The first step. The first thing you want to do and making the apple compote is prep your apples, and I'm just going to show you how I do it. Obviously, you can use a core. You can use a peeler attached to a kitchen aid whatever equipment you have. But I'm just using a regular old peeler cutting board and a chef's knife. So I started out at the top of my apple up by this stem and start peeling, and I peel in circles, working my way down, trying to keep it all in one piece. If it breaks, that's okay. But this is just the quickest way I've found Teoh peel an apple by hand, and I always rinse my apples to before I do this. So that's also an important step. When you're prepping, anything with a skin is, rinse it before you peel it. Okay, once that's done. Now, as I mentioned, I don't have a corer, so I'm gonna show you how to get the core out without using a core. When you're cutting, you always want to keep your fingers tucked back in. If you have it figures out like this, you're way more likely. Teoh, cut your fingertips and we don't want that. So whenever you're handling, always keep your first knuckle out past your fingertips. So I know basically where the core is in my apple when you peel it like this. Generally, when you have your peeler flush to the top and you peel, whatever part of the peel has left is basically where your core is gonna be. So I'm going to cut to the outside of that and you can see right there is where my core is about to peek through so that I'm just going to do the same thing on the other side. There we go. And then I lay it down like this. Teoh cut out my center because then I could see it. Merry go. The core is out. So we want to get a nice small dice on this and I start out by taking these end pieces. I'm gonna cut him in half this way that I'm gonna cut him in half again. This way do one and then the other. Come on, put him together like this and you can get the rest of your dice finished, and I'm keeping the tip down on the cutting board and just going down, pushing forward and kind of doing a rocking motion and whatever stuck to your knife. That's nice, because it's just going to go straight into your pot, whatever saucepan you're using and always be careful when you're doing this. Don't get anywhere close to the blade. I just keep my finger up in away from the sharp edge and push my apples right in. And then for this, we're gonna go this way in half, cut about halfway through, turning up on its side and then finish cutting. Then I'm gonna cut small strips this way, and sometimes your apple will stick to the blade. That's OK. You can just guide it off. I can use the edge of my knife to help me turn and then finish my dice Ray across there, scoop the whole half right up into the pot and then last one halfway through strips. Turn rock my blade to finish out the cut, and then you just continue with all of your apples, either for small apples or three large apples, depending on what type you're using. compote is so simple to make, and that's why I like using hit in cakes as a filling. It's basically just a fruit cooked in a sugar syrup, so you can you have two options and making com Pote. You can cook it for a shorter period of time for about 15 to 20 minutes. And that's going to give you some syrup with the fruit, which will still be nice in a cake because you can just spoon it over the top of the cake and the syrup will soak into the cake so it kind of doubles as a simple syrup and filling. Or you can cook it longer, which is what I like to dio. And then you just have more of ah filling and the apples soak up all of the flavor. And then you can also fold it into other things when you cook it longer. So I actually cooked mine for about 45 minutes, which seems like a long time, but it's low and slow now. It's an all in one pot method. There's really not anything fancy about it, so I've already got my apples ready to go and then I have 1/4 cup of regular grand leading granulated sugar and 1/4 cup of packed brown sugar, two tablespoons of unsalted butter and then I have 1/4 cup of water, which is going to be the make the syrup. Simple syrup is sugar and water or sugar and some type of liquid, and then also the quarter cup of Calvados, which is an apple brandy. And I like to add this kind of like a really nice high end gourmet flavor, and I always have it on hand. I'd like to add it to things that have apple in it, and this cooks a really long time, so it's gonna cook off all the alcohol. There's 1/4 cup of that, and then I have about 1/2 a teaspoon of vanilla. And then I have my allspice and cinnamon. So all of these ingredients are just going to go right into the pot, and I'm gonna coat the apples, and then it's going to go on medium low heat. - So the apple compote has been cooking for about 20 minutes, and this is when you might see a lot of other recipes will tell you to remove it from the heat, you can see a lot of the apples have become really translucent. They're cooked through really well, and they've changed color. So this you could still see. There's a good bit of liquid, and this would be great to use to soak into your cake, and you can use this as a filling. But like I said, I like to cook it for about another 20 minutes, and you'll really see the difference. It really darkens someone to keep letting that cook on medium low heat. So the apple compote has been simmering for about 45 minutes, and you can see it has thicken. And there's a lot less liquid, the apples or darker. They've really soak up all that flavor and liquid, and this is where I like my compote to be. So at this point, I'm going to remove it from the heat, gonna put in another bowl and wrap with plastic and pop it in the refrigerator to let it cool overnight, and it'll thicken up and barely have any liquid on it. It'll be a nice selling 10. Blackberry Clear Jel Method: I love making fruit filling with the instant clear del because it's so simple. There's no cooking involved. You can get a clear Joe where you do have to cook it, and it's a similar start to cornstarch or flour. But this I actually discovered when I was working in a small bakery in Montana, and we started using this for all of our fruit fillings. And I really love the texture, the ease and the huge time that it took away from making all of those cooked fruit fillings . So it's super simple and the general rule for the instant clear job for the brand that I have always check the bag. There's instructions, but what I have is it for about every one cup of juice that your fruit produces, you're gonna want to use half a cup of sugar and three tablespoons of the instant clear job . Keep in mind that some fruits will produce more juice. I have Blackberrys here, and these produce ah, lot of juice, but you also want to make sure that they're fully thought I'm using frozen blackberries. So using frozen raspberries, blackberries, peaches, anything they got, just make sure that's completely falled no ice, no chunks of frozen fruit so that you're getting the full amount of juice because you don't want them to release more juice after you've already set your ratios for sugar and clear job and one other thing raspberries. Berries like this, they tend to break down once you mix them said simply, something to keep in mind as well. We're working with a clear Joe. The biggest thing is, if you add it directly to liquid, it's gonna clump. So you want to add your sugar into the clear job and mix it really well before you add it to your fruit. This is going Teoh. Keep it from clumping. Those sugar crystals are cutting up the clear gel and making it almost like the same effect is sifting and it's a little dusty. It's kicking up a little bit, and as you put this in, just you want to be stirring your fruit and use a whisk. This is going to help prevent more clumpy, and you'll see that it starts to thicken pretty quickly. Instantly make sure in there now if you'd want more of like a of the gel part, not eso the fruit, but the actual liquid part that sets, if that's your preference toe, have more like the jelly. Then you can add a little bit of water to your fruit and just adjust the ratio of sugar and clear gel to that. But I like less Joe on my fruit. So just whatever's the natural amount that comes out of the Berries is what I leave it up. So some of it broke down. A lot of it stayed intact, though, but this is becoming really sick, and you can just let this sit for about 10 minutes. At that point, it will actually be ready to use as the filling, and you could just spread it into a cake. Or you can cover this with surround rapport, put it in a plastic irritate container and store it in the refrigerator. But it's really that simple to use the instant clear job so easy, and I don't have any lumps in there because I was stirring. As I added it 11. Pastry Cream: as a pastry chef, I made a lot of pastry. Cream is probably one of the most common things that I knew how to make from scratch, typically made of whole milk, sugar, eggs and corn starch, sometimes butter and, of course, flavorings. Now there's variations on that, depending on what recipe read into who you might be working for. It varies, so you might see situations where there's heavy cream involved. Maybe somebody uses flour instead of corn starch, even flavoring it with melted chocolate or just different herbs, spices and other flavorings. Now what I can tell you from my experience, making all of that pastry cream is that you always want to watch out for tempering your eggs. That's the biggest, most import, in part because if you don't temper them correctly, you'll have little bits of scrambled egg in your pastry cream. And nobody wants that. Of course, the safest way to go is always run it through a sieve at the end before you store it or use it in your project. It's great in cakes. It's also using a lot of European desserts. Fruit tarts. I love pastry cream in princess cakes with fresh strawberries, Bananas on whipped cream something I definitely recommend with pastry cream is you Onley. Make what you're going to use within seven days. I used to make huge batches of it in very large pots with gallons of milk out of time, so I'm gonna show you a smaller scale recipe that you can use for small projects. Use up within seven days because it doesn't frieze well. It'll separate and get kind of grainy, so I don't we don't recommend freezing it. The really cool thing I think about pastry cream is that not only is it just a great custardy filling, but you can actually ADM or things to it once it's complete to turn it into something else , you could make a creme diplomat by adding whipped cream and folding that in. There's also a moussa lean cream with the addition of butter and gives you a really glassy , silky cream felling. Now, in this section, I will show you how to make a pastry cream added for flavors to it, and then add the whipped cream ab butter to make a creme diplomat and a muscling cream. So good to see those variations and discover that pastry cream is really a must have for any cake maker in there. A recipe book. I really recommend that you try out the recipes in this section, you won't be disappointed. 12. Basic Pastry Cream Method: So I've already prepped my muse on class for pastry cream, and I have three cups of whole milk ready to go in my pot and 1/2 a cup of the sugar from the recipe the other quarter cup. You're going to see how to use that in just a bit, but we want to heat up the milk at this point. So I'm just gonna put half a cup granulated sugar into my milk and turn this on to medium medium high heat and let it go until it comes to a boil. Now, as faras flavorings go, you can add a lot of different flavorings to pastry cream. But if you want, Teoh impart flavors from something that needs to be heated and steeped. This is the part where you would add it something like herbs or nuts or spices, zests or alcohol. For this, I'm actually going to put some Grand Marnier in here that I just have on hand on. The reason I'm putting in now is because it's going to give it ample amount of time to cook and cook off the alcohol. I don't want this pastry cream to be really boozy and that's something to keep in mind. If you do want it tohave some alcohol content in it, then you would add it at the end before you chill it. But if you want to cook off the alcohol ad that now and as I mentioned other flavorings, you would add them. And then once this has come to a boil, you have pull it off of the heat and let it steep for between 10 to 30 minutes on. Then continue on making your pastry cream, and then you have pass it through ah sieve to remove any unenviable pieces like stems, or, you know, if you don't want the whole nuts in your pastry cream. So I was gonna give us a stir because I have sugar in there and I don't want it all to sit on the bottom and cook. You can add any number of flavored liquors. Grammar A is orange, which is going to work out really great, because I'm gonna show you how to turn this piece you cream into ah, chocolate, orange pastry cream and some other variations. But you could use cow does, which is an apple brandy. I've seen lavender vodka you know there's there's a lot of options. Just head over to you know, your local liquor store grocery store and check out the hard liquor a section. You could also add wines as well or champagne, so my sugar is pretty well dissolved in there, and I was gonna let this sit and come to a boil. Once the milk and sugar comes to a boil, you just want to turn off your burner and remove it from the heat so that it doesn't boil over. So I just set that aside, and I'm going to let it sit while I prepare my other ingredients. Before I got started, I had already measured out all of my other ingredients, so I have the quarter cup plus two tablespoons of cornstarch into a medium bowl. Then I have my eight large egg yolks, plus two large hole eggs and the other quarter cup of the sugar. I saved this part until the milk was ready because I don't want to coagulate my eggs. I want to start by putting the quarter cup of sugar into the eggs and start whisking immediately that sugar is acidic and it can cook the egg yolks and we don't want that. You start out by doing the eggs and sugar together to break up the egg so that they're ready to be put into the corn starch. And then this mixture is just going to go right in there. Wisk it all together. Corn search could be kind of messy, so just be prepared for that E. But any tiny pieces of corn start in there. Don't worry about it Going to pass this through a sieve at the end, and it will get anything that's locked over. But I still want to get it really well incorporated because every little bit of corn starch is necessary for this. So once that's ready, I'm just gonna put a towel on my work surface because this is going to keep my bull steady and they want to start tempering the hot milk. And so I'm just gonna pour a little bit of a hot milk and at a time and stir vigorously, and this is going to bring the eggs up to the temperature of the milk without cooking them . I'm creating scrambled eggs once you have a really good amount of milk in there you could just pour the egg mixture back into hot milk, and then this is going to go back on the stove to really activate the corn starch and cook it until it's thick so it's back or into the stove on medium heat, and I just want to keep whisking it. I don't wanna let it stop because the heat on the bottom of the pot is really going to thicken and you don't want it to get lumpy. I want to keep it moving so that it heats up nice and evenly, and this just takes a few minutes. Just hang out with it so I can actually feel it starting to thicken. That's resisting the with a little bit. I can see a tiny bit of custard thinking on the end of my wist, which means that it's setting up on the bottom of the pot, and that's why I want to keep it moving so I can really feel it thickening now and resisting against the whisk, and I can see that it's starting to leave a trail in the pastry cream with the Wisc. Now it's really thick, all right, and that's when I want to remove it from the heat. As soon as it gets this really thick stage, you can see it's very thick. You want to add in your butter while it's hot, and I have diced up my better so that it melts really nicely and quickly into the pastry cream. I just wanna whisk that in my pastry cream until it's completely melted. I think intel that the butters all melted in. There's what pass it through a sieve into another bowl. This is really gonna get out any of those little bits of corn search, regulated egg, whatever might be hiding in there, and you have to help it through because it's so thick, so just working it through the majority of it. I'm not gonna try to really smash all of this through because I don't want to be intentionally putting any lumps of anything into my pastry cream. So I just do that. Give it a tad clean off, but a little bit, and there we go. That's the pastry cream, and at this point, you would want to cover with plastic wrap with the plastic wrap directly on the surface of the pastry cream. Pull up your edges and push the plastic job down into your bowl just to create a really nice seal and that'll keep it from forming a skin on your pastry cream, and then you control this typically like to chill it overnight takes about, Ah, full eight hours to really thinking up and cool off completely, But that's the pastry cream. 13. Chocolate Pastry Cream: you can make a chocolate pastry cream, which is absolutely divine. As soon as you're done making the pastry cream and you strained it and it's still hot. You just want to pour whatever amount you're using of your pastry cream to make chocolate over top of some chocolate. I just have about 1/2 of a 4.4 ounce chocolate far. This is about 72% cow, and I just broke it up into pieces. I'm just gonna take some of my pastry cream, the hot pastry cream, and put it directly over top of that chocolate. Now the amount of chocolate that you choose really depends on your preference. Do you like things really chocolatey, or do you like them with just a little bit of chocolate? It's up to you, but you really want to make sure that you take advantage of the pastry cream when it's at its hottest before you chill it in that way, the chocolate will be fully melted and incorporated into the pastry cream, and I'm not worried about how little or how much chocolate I would add, because chocolate in the refrigerator, which is the way that you start pastry cream is going to be naturally very, very firm, so it's not going to thin out the pastry cream whatsoever. If anything, it's going to stabilize it more. So just keep that in mind. It might make your pastry cream a little bit firmer, but I'm just going to stir it in there. You could see the chocolate is nicely melting into the pastry cream, and it looks like chocolate pudding. Here we go. It's that simple, and you would just store this the same way that you would regular pastry cream but some plastic wrap onto the surface and let it fully chill for at least eight hours. Chocolate pastry cream. 14. Mousseline Cream: you could take your pastry cream one step further and make it a moussa lean cream. There's also known as a German buttercream, and the general rule is one cup of soften whipped butter to two cups of pastry cream. It's super rich, but it's so silky and full bodied and delicious. So I have just 1/2 a cup of butter here. I'm going to do 1/2 a cup of butter to one cup of pastry cream for this demonstration, and I'm just gonna beat this and whip it up until it has a little bit of air in it. And it's really nice and broken down, so it's not a large amount, and it's kind of just clinging to the sides. But it's nice and soft in whipped up. No, I was gonna add in my delicious pastry cream that I made yesterday, and I can really taste the Grand Marnier and they're delicious every last little bit. Okay, No, I'm gonna whip this together until it comes to a nice for the even consistency. Now you can see a mailer curdle, but that's OK. That's just because the pastry cream is cold. Just keep whipping it and it will turn smooth. Okay, this has been whipping on medium high for several minutes, and you can see that it has come together and made this really lovely silky cream butter cream. Now, alternatively, you can warm up your pastry cream before you start this so that it's not on the mixer as long you could just microwave it for about eight seconds out of time and stir it every time until it's, you know, come closer to room temperature. And then this process will just go that much faster and you just get this really lovely smooth cream, and that is the most Saleen cream. 15. Diplomat Cream: Crumb diplomat is another nice variation on pastry cream and just pastry cream lightened with whipped cream. Generally, I like to do about 3/4 of a cup of cold, heavy whipping cream to one cup of pastry cream, so I'm gonna start out on. My boat has been chilled for about 10 minutes in the refrigerator, but I have 3/4 of a cup of heavy whipping cream here, and I'm gonna get that into my bowl and whipped up. Okay, so this has been going for about three minutes, and it's not super thick. It's just before soft peaks, and the reason is this is going to get whipped more so I don't want Teoh over Whip it. It's kind of at the ribbon stage, so I have my chocolate pastry cream that I made the other day, and this ended up being pretty thick. So that's why I want to use it for this crime diplomat, because it's really gonna lighten it up. You want to start out with about half of your pastry cream, so it's to be half a cup. You see how thick it is? Put that right in there. I'm going to gently whip this until it's combined. So it's just combined, and you can see that the cream has definitely thickened. It's about at a medium peak right now, so I'm going to add the other part of my pastry cream. I just wish that in. Make sure you stop your mixer and scrape down the sides of the bowl. I can still see some thick ribbons of chocolate pastry cream in there. Keep whipping in a little bit until that's mixed in really well. Okay, so my pastry cream is thoroughly combined in there, and this is at really stiff peaks now, and you could see its thick and nice, so it would hold up well in between layers. The cake. But it's definitely lightened up that really thick chocolate pastry cream and lightened up the color lighting up the texture lightened up the flavor, which is what I wanted. But all in all, this is just a really nice light diplomat cream 16. Mousse: If you're an avid desert lover like I am, you've probably had a chocolate mousse somewhere along the line, and you know that it's light and airy, and it kind of melts in your mouth a little bit to a thick, silky custard. Now they're basically Acosta enlightened with egg whites or whipped cream. You can also add a jokes for a richer, denser mouth feel and some cases you'll add gelatin, which the recipe in this section we will take a look at adding gelatin to it, because that's going to give you more stability as a cake filling, which is what this course is based on. Now a moose technically can be sweet or savory. I personally prefer it as sweet and most commonly see it flavored with chocolate white chocolate caramel mint. We're gonna take a look at a peanut butter mousse, which I absolutely love. Peanut butter, especially paired with chocolate, also give you a guide on how to take the basic mousse recipe and pretty much add any flavour to it that you can come up with. Fruit based moves is are delicious, and you can add different types of flavorings. You could even add chocolate chips, nuts, all kinds of fun and interesting things to moose. A few things to be aware of mainly with the storage of moose. Now, if you don't use it all right away in a cake or dessert, you can put it in the refrigerator and store it up to three days or even freeze it up to a month. I just make sure to have it fault if it was frozen, and when I pull it on the refrigerator, just kind of fluff it with a spatula because it will set into a mess. And if you go to try to spread that into a cake, it's going to be kind of lumpy, an awkward. So I just reincorporated a little bit, not too much that it breaks down all of the gelatin, but just a little bit to make it smoother and more spread. Herbal, also with moose, is always keep them refrigerated. If you're gonna be using them in a cake, it's going to have to be a cake that is always refrigerated. So that's something to keep in mind. You can't let them sit out for long periods of time. They will melt and break down and I've seen that before And where cakes had moose in them and somebody accidentally let it sit out and the cake just totally fell apart. So awful. Please avoid that. Always keep anything that is dairy based, refrigerated at all times. 17. Peanut Butter Mousse Method: to get started making the peanut butter mousse. I've already measured out the majority of my ingredients. I have my 1/4 cup of sugar, one cup of heavy cream. I have my palate, er, gelatin and about 1/4 cup of egg yolks, which ended up being about four large egg yolks. I just need to measure out my peanut butter and white chocolate and the way that they get incorporated. They can be measured right into the same bowl, but I also wanted to choose a bowl. It's gonna be large enough to fit all of my custard in it, so that's something to definitely keep in mind. But I'm starting with my bowl on this scale before I turn it on so it just turns on already at zero. And for this recipe, the unit is in ounces. There. Have my ounces? Must have not with the peanut butter recipe just calls for four ounces. Truth be told, I love this peanut butter mousse so much that it's good just in a parfait glass or wine glass with some whipped cream on it. It's also equally delicious, layered in ah, chocolate cake with some chocolate crema. All right. So I have four ounces of peanut butter, and I'm just gonna measure in two ounces of my white chocolate, and they just want to break it up into pieces. This'll chocolate has a nice little markings on it. Makes it easy going to 62 ounces for palace to a six. There we go. That's ready to go. Once I have my ingredients for the custard measured out, I want to bloom my powdered gelatin on. This basically just means to hydrate the gelatin so it can later be melted into a warm or hot substance. So I have two teaspoons measured out of the powder gelatine and two tablespoons cold water . Always use cold water. Miss got poor that overtop. If you find that there is a part of it that's not hydrating, that sometimes I will just pull it up and try to get it's surrounded by liquid. Break it up a little bit. That way, I don't have any unhygienic. It'd chunks of gelatin. We don't want that. And if there is a couple little bits of solid gelatin, don't worry about that, because when we make the custard later on, we can just strain those out. But I don't like to add too much extra liquid, because then it's gonna affect the end consistency. So I try to do just enough to fully hydrate, which is two tablespoons 22 tea spoons. So I'm just gonna set this aside and then get started on the custard. Start out. I want to put my one crop of heavy creams into my stainless steel soft hand, and I'm gonna heat this up until just about boiling. Someone put my heavy cream on Teoh medium heat on. Let it go for a couple minutes until it's starting to form bubbles, and it's just about ready to boil. Once the cream starts to bubble up around the edges, I want to combine my sugar with my egg yolk on. The reason that I don't do this right in the beginning is because the sugar with the acidity will cook the egg yolks if you with them together too soon and then you'll have little chunks of cooked egg yolks and we don't want that, so I do it right before my cream is done. So I'm just going to add my egg yolks directly into the sugar quickly I don't wanna let them sit in that sugar for very long, and then I'm just gonna whisk him right in whisking them thoroughly. And then at this point, I can start to temper my hot cream. A nice tip is to put the bowl that you're gonna be stirring vigorously into put on a towel or a potholder to keep it from spinning and moving around too much because your other hand is going to be busy pouring the cream. So with your mixing hand, have that in the bowl ready to go, and then with your other hand, you're going to slowly pour in a little bit at a time of the hot cream. I'm just doing a tiny bit to bring the temperature of the egg yolks up, but not enough heavy cream, too. Cook the egg yolks all it wants and essentially scramble them. And once you have it pretty well mixed in there, you can add the rest of the cream, so that's tempered. And now this is where I want to add in my gelatin that's gonna go in that's gonna make sure that it gets completely melted. So I'm just gonna whisk that in until it's melted. And okay, I'm not seeing any chunks of gelatin, so that's perfect. Now I just want to pour this hot custard mixture. And if you're using a metabolic, I am be very careful cause it's gonna be hot. Pour this right over the white chocolate and peanut butter, and I'm gonna let that sit for about a minute to allow the white chocolate and peanut butter to get soft and come up to the temperature of the custard. And then I'll whisk it all together once that's had about a minute to sit. I'm just going to start carefully, stirring so I don't wash it up out of the bowl and just mixing in the peanut butter and white chocolate until it's smooth. I can see that it's starting to thicken as the chocolate peanut butter melt into the custard, and it may seem pretty thin still, but there's two teaspoons of gelatin. The gelatin and the white chocolate and the peanut butter are all going to help this set up into a firm custard, so don't worry if it still looks pretty thin. Once this is cool, it will be nice and sick. So this is pretty well combined, and I saved the bowl that had the heavy cream in it earlier, and I just put the strainer on it. I'm just gonna run this through the sieve to make sure that there's not any bits of egg yolk or gelatin white chocolate. Nothing's hiding in there. So we weren't really smooth custard, which will give you a nice, smooth moose. In the end, it's actually pretty good. There's not a whole lot of stuff left in the pot. Um, of this there was a little bit of cream in the bowl, so I'm just gonna make sure that stirred in. But that is the custard. Once that's mais, this custard is gonna sit in the refrigerator until it's chilled. I typically just make mine the day before and let it chill overnight. That way it gives the gelatin the full 24 hours just set, and it's just easier that way. I don't have as much prep in one day, so I'm gonna take my plastic wrap and I actually with any custard you want the plastic wrap to go down and touch the surface, and this is going to prevent a skin from forming on the top of a custard because if you get that skin on your custard, it will not reincorporate. And then you kind of have a lumpy custard. We don't want that. So we have a press down really well, it's gonna have a nice seal on it, and you could just put it right into the refrigerator like this. Once the custard for the moose has thoroughly chilled, it's time to whip the cream. There's another amount of cream and the recipe 12 ounces, so I went ahead and measure that directly into my chilled mixing bowl. I just popping, mixing bowl in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes, and that's going to allow the whipping cream to get to its full volume. I'm gonna go ahead and put this on to medium high speed and let it go until it's at stiff peaks. It's been a couple of minutes, and my heavy cream has come to stiff peaks. They don't move it all. They stand straight up. That's what I'm looking for. I don't want to go past this because then it'll start to get greening turn into butter, set that aside and I have a pretty sturdy spatula because this custard has really set up. You can see it's pretty firm. So I just want toe it's divided into smaller amounts and put those into the cream. Okay, then I'm just going Teoh, fold this into my heavy cream and once you have a lot of it mixed in. But the little pieces are really breaking down as much. You can just problem back onto the mixer and run the whisk through it a little bit just to get it fully combined. Make sure you get everything off the sides. You don't lose any cream or custard. Okay? That looks really good and thick. I could just check it. We don't have any big lumps. All nice and combines. You can use this right away to fill a cake. Or you can put it back in the refrigerator in store it you can piping in a parfait. Cops, however, gonna use it. This moose is ready to go 18. Thank You!: thanks so much for taking the course. I really hope you enjoyed it. You're now a few steps closer to creating amazing cakes with interesting flavor combinations. Don't forget. Their great resource is that you can download and print help. You complete be techniques we learned in the course. If you have any questions about anything in the course, go ahead and send me a message and I really encourage you to complete the project. It's going to help you get familiar with the techniques, and I'd also love to give you feedback. Lastly, if you could leave a review for the course, that would be fantastic. It really helps other students know whether or not the course is worth taking again. Thanks so much. I hope to see you in another course.