[Inez] Pi/e Day

I made a Boston cream pie for Pi Day. Of course, it's not actually a pie, but it has "pie" in the name... that's good enough, right? Incidentally, does anyone know why Boston cream pie is called pie instead of cake?

In case you don't know, Boston cream pie is made by sandwiching pastry cream between two sponge cakes and topping it with chocolate ganache. It is holygoodness good. That's a new measurement I just made up. 


For normal math, the order of operations is generally referred to with the acronym PEMDAS (which, of course, stands for Please Evict Me Dear Algebra S....uh...Sychopath. Erm....) but for Boston cream pie on Pi Day you should remember FCG (filling - cake - ganache). It's like if FGC (Friends General Committee) were mildly dyslexic.


I'm going to give you the baby version recipes -- I didn't want to have a WHOLE BIG Boston cream pie, so I put my 6 inch pans to good use and made a half recipe. Incidentally, did you know that the volume of a cylinder 6" in diameter, if filled with 2" of cake batter, is almost exactly .45 the volume of a cylinder 9" in diameter filled with 2" of cake batter? In case you forgot, the equation for the volume of a cylinder includes Pi. How's that for some math, Pi Day? Anyway if you want to make a regular sized Boston cream pie, just double everything.


Pastry Cream
I didn't take any pictures of this process because a) it's really easy, and b) I was too busy stirring. Here's the recipe (make this first before anything else).

• 1/4 tbsp butter
• 1/2 cup whole milk
• 1/2 cup cream
• 3 T sugar
• pinch salt
• 1 T cornstarch
• 3 small eggs (or maybe 2 really big eggs? the recipe called for 5 large eggs)
• 1/2-1 t vanilla

Heat the butter, milk and cream to just about to boil or so. Meanwhile mix the sugar, salt, cornstarch, and eggs in a bowl. When the milk etc is hot, add the egg mixture. Stir constantly on low heat until it thickens up. Put it in a bowl, mix in the vanilla, cover it, and put it in the fridge for a few hours. Make yourself a snack.

Sponge Cake

Have you ever made sponge cake before? I hadn't, and it is an absurdly counterintuitive way to make cake.

• 6 T flour
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/8 t salt
• 1 T milk
• 2 T butter
• 1/4 t vanilla
• 3 small eggs (recipe called for 5 large eggs)
• 6 T sugar
• 1/8 t cream of tarter (or substitute with same amount of vinegar)

Preheat oven to 350F, grease your pans, and all that.

Whisk flour, baking powder and salt in a big bowl.

Heat milk and butter just until butter melts. Add vanilla. Cover and keep warm.

Separate eggs. Beat whites till foamy, then gradually add 3 T of the sugar and the cream of tartar or vinegar, and continue to beat eggs till soft, moist peaks form.

In a separate bowl, beat yolks with remaining sugar until very thick and a pale lemon color. Yes, this makes for a lot of separate bowls.

This is where I got nervous. Add the whites to the yolks but don't mix them. Sprinkle or sift the flour mixture over the eggs and mix them on low speed for 10 seconds (yes, I put a stall count on my cake batter). Make a well on one side of the batter (Why one side? I don't know. That's just what the recipe told me to do.) and pour the butter mixture into it. Fold gently until it's evenly mixed -- there should be no visible grease or oil.


Immediately pour the batter into your pre-prepared pans (you better have prepared them pre!). Bake until light brown, which took around 20 minutes or so. I was checking every few minutes after 15 or so, so I'm really not sure exactly how long it took.


Call some friends and invite them over to eat Boston cream pie. They won't say no.


Let the cake cool completely, let the custard chill and set some more, and eat some more food. Then make Ganache! I didn't halve the recipe, but I may have gone a bit overboard (see the picture at the top of the post...) and there was also leftover ganache.


Ganache

• 1/3 cup cream
• 1 T butter
• 4 oz chocolate, chopped (or about 2 cups of chocolate chips)

Bring cream and butter to a low simmer (stirring so it doesn't scald). Turn off the heat, mix in the chocolate. Don't be impatient like me, stick it in the fridge and let it cool off!

I got impatient and put the cream on the bottom cake.

I put almost all of it, which may have been going overboard. I was thinking, sponge cake is so light! But I forgot that ganache is really heavy. I would recommend going a little easy on the cream, and then you can spoon some more onto your slice.

Stephen and Ranajoy came over and between them, Colin, and me, we ate the whole damn thing in less than half an hour.

Review: it's a little intensive, but Boston cream pie is definitively DELICIOUS. Do it.