Chokolade Kagecreme (Chocolate Pastry Cream)

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, like in the lagkage and the blueberry buns, we’ll pair it 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! It’s so rich and full of chocolatey flavor, thanks to the inclusion of both cocoa powder and chocolate in the recipe. And best of all, it’s simple to make, so you’ll find yourself looking for excuses to make it and incorporate it into as many desserts as possible!

Making chocolate pastry cream

To make kagecreme, simply heat up some milk until it is simmering and whisk your remaining ingredients (except the butter and chocolate) together really well in a heatproof bowl. Be careful not to let the milk get too hot, as you don’t want to scorch it! This can lead to a not-so-great flavor in the final pastry cream and lumps if you let the milk catch on the bottom of the pan.

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” may sound a bit strange, but it basically just means gently and evenly heating them up and cooking them, turning them into a smooth sauce or cream. Which also means don’t worry, we are cooking the eggs in this recipe – no raw eggs in the final product! 😆

Tempering eggs

To temper your eggs, pour half of the hot milk into the egg mixture (slowly!) and whisk continuously. Even a second’s pause could mean you end up with a lumpy custard! 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! Because the cornstarch is acting as the thickening agent, though, you need to make sure you bring it up to almost the boiling point for it to be activated and start to thicken the custard.

Then, add the chopped dark chocolate or chocolate chips and whisk until everything 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! Also, you can find a list of recipes in the next section to give you some inspiration for how to use this chocolate pastry cream. If you do use our recipe, please leave us a comment and a rating below – we love to hear how our recipes turn out!

What to use our chocolate pastry cream for

We have several recipes that are a perfect way to use up this chocolate pastry cream, if you don’t want to just eat it with a spoon, though we wouldn’t blame you if that’s exactly what you chose to do.

• Double Chocolate Fastelavnsboller: A double-chocolate take on traditional fastelavnsboller, which are made for the Danish holiday of Fastelavn, these custard-filled buns are so decadent and delicious!
• Fruit Tart with Chocolate Cream: A showstopper of a dessert, perfect to use up some berries in a wonderful and beautiful tart! It’s also nice and light, so perfect for the warmer spring and summer months.
• Chocolate and Raspberry Trifle: Again, you can’t go wrong with berries and chocolate. And this dessert is so easy, especially if you build one giant trifle to spoon servings from. Yum!

Chocolate Kagecreme (Chocolate Pastry Cream)

5 from 3 votes

This recipe produces a delicious, silky-smooth chocolate cream that you can use to fill eclairs, cakes, tarts, and various other desserts, such as our very own vandbakkelser or fastelavnsboller!

Servings 1 portion

Prep Time 5 minutes mins

Cook Time 15 minutes mins

Total Time 20 minutes mins

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IMPORTANT NOTE:

We always bake using a digital scale and the metric system (grams and milliliters). We can’t promise that our cup measurements will be as accurate! Additionally, we bake and develop our recipes in a convection (fan) oven.

Ingredients

 

US CustomaryMetric

 

1x2x3x

• 3 large egg yolks OR 4 medium egg yolks
• 50 grams sugar
• Pinch of salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 20 grams cornstarch
• 15 grams cocoa powder
• 400 ml whole milk
• 100 grams 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!)
• 28 grams 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!
  

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: Danish

Keyword: chocolate, classic, custard, danish pastry, filling, rich

Difficulty: Beginner