The Perfect Filling
If you ask us, the best filling for cakes and pastries is, undoubtedly, pastry cream. If you make it correctly, it is silky smooth with an amazing flavor and sweetness. In lots of Danish pastries, we use vanilla pastry cream as a filling. For example, in our traditional lagkage (birthday layer cake), fastelavnsboller (cream-filled Carnival buns), and blåbärsbullar (blueberry buns). Oftentimes, it is paired with a fruit jam that is tart and balances perfectly with the smooth pastry cream. We absolutely love the classic vanilla pastry cream but recently, we thought about how chocolate pastry cream may also be a great flavor to incorporate into some of our baked goods. And voila – this recipe was born!
Making Chocolate Pastry Cream
To make kagecreme, you simply heat up some milk until it is simmering and whisk your remaining ingredients (except the butter and chocolate) together really well in a heat proof bowl. Be careful not to let the milk get too hot, as you don’t want to scorch it! The most difficult part is tempering the egg mixture – just be careful not to pour the milk too quickly or you might end up with scrambled eggs.
Tempering Eggs
To temper your eggs, pour half of the milk into the egg mixture (slowly!) and whisk continually. Then, return the mixture to the pan with the rest of the milk and whisk until it thickens – it’s like magic before your very own eyes! Then, add the chocolate and whisk until it is melted. Finally, we like to finish off our pastry cream with a few tablespoons of butter for added richness and a silky smooth finish. See the list of ingredients and our step by step recipe below! If you try our recipe, please leave us a comment and a rating below – we love to hear how our recipes turn out!
Chocolate Kagecreme (Chocolate Pastry Cream)
Ingredients
- 3 large egg yolks OR 4 medium egg yolks
- 50 grams (1/4 cup) sugar
- Pinch of salt
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 20 grams (2 tbsp, leveled) cornstarch
- 15 grams (2 tbsp, leveled) cocoa powder
- 100 grams (~1/2 cup + 2 tbsp) chocolate (this can be chocolate chips or a chopped up chocolate bar; we do prefer using dark chocolate for this, but you can use milk chocolate instead!)
- 400 ml (1 3/4 cups) whole milk
- 28 grams (2 tbsp) unsalted butter
Instructions
- Combine the egg yolks, sugar, salt, vanilla extract, cornstarch, and cocoa powder in a large or medium heat-proof bowl. Whisk vigorously until smooth.
- Heat the milk in a saucepan on medium heat. Once it starts to bubble a bit, remove it from the heat. Be sure not to scald the milk, as it will affect the flavor of the pastry cream!
- Pour half of the milk into the egg mixture, while whisking vigorously. It helps to put a towel underneath the bowl to help prevent it from sliding around!
- Then, pour the egg and milk mixture into the saucepan with the rest of the milk and whisk.
- Place the saucepan back on medium heat and continue to whisk. Once the mixture is heated through, it should start to thicken. Whisk for about 30 seconds, until bubbles start to break the surface.
- Once the mixture has thickened, stir in chocolate chips or chopped chocolate and whisk until it is fully melted and incorporated.
- Remove from heat and add the butter, whisking until it melts into the mixture.
- Transfer to a bowl and cover with plastic wrap, making sure that the plastic wrap touches the surface of the cream to avoid a skin forming. Refrigerate for 1-2 hours or until cooled. Then use for filling pastries, cakes, or whatever you like!
Hello Emma and Sofie ♥️🤗
Love your recipes. They’re just SO amazing.
I had a question with the chocolate pastry cream recipe. Can I add a mixture of dark and milk chocolate instead of only dark or milk chocolate? Let me know pls ♥️
Hello! Thank you so much – we really appreciate it ❤️ Yes, you can definitely use a combination of the two!
Thank you so much 😊
Thank you 🙂 I tried the Chocolate Raspberry trifle and it was AMAZING 🤩 also could you pls let me know for how long I can store this Chocolate pastry cream for? Can I freeze it?
No problem! I think we replied to you on Instagram but I’m going to respond here too in case anyone else is looking for the answer to your question 🙂 Pastry cream generally doesn’t freeze that well because it separates when it thaws again, but if you have a lot left over then you can try – I would just suggest reheating it slowly on the stove and adding a bit of extra milk until it reaches the correct consistency again! Hope that helps 🙂