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Washington Cream Pie
Put whipped cream between and on top of layer cake, or use the following filling: 1 1/2 tablespoons cooking oil 1/3 cup sifted flour 3/4 cup sugar 2 cups milk 2 eggs 1 teaspoon vanilla A few grains salt Heat the oil and flour together. Stir into them the milk, which has been heated with the sugar. Cook in a double boiler till thickened. Stir some of the hot mixture into the beaten eggs, then stir the eggs into the hot mixture. Cook two minutes. Then add the salt and vanilla.
This is a plain pastry cream, thickened with flour rather than cornstarch, meant to be spread between the layers of a cake baked separately. The recipe assumes you already have the cake.
- The hinge: temper the eggsStirring a ladle of the hot milk mixture into the beaten eggs before returning them to the pan is what keeps the custard smooth. Reverse the order and you get sweet scrambled egg that no amount of beating will rescue.
- Oil in place of butterOne and a half tablespoons of cooking oil stands in for the butter of a classic crème pâtissière. It works — the oil simply carries the flour so it disperses — but the finished cream tastes flatter. An equal weight of butter gives more flavour and a firmer set once chilled.
- Cook the flour outHeating oil and flour together first is a roux. Give it a minute over low heat before the milk goes in, or the custard keeps a raw, pasty edge that the vanilla will not mask.
- Double boiler timingOver a double boiler the milk mixture will take a good while to thicken c rather longer than a direct-heat custard. "Cook two minutes" after the eggs go in is the minimum; a starch-and-egg cream generally wants to be brought near boiling briefly so the flour sets fully and the yolk enzyme that would otherwise thin it later is destroyed.
- Straining and chillingPass the finished cream through a sieve into a shallow dish, press plastic wrap or buttered paper on the surface, and chill at least two hours. Warm custard will slide out of a layer cake.
- YieldRoughly two and a half cups c enough to fill and lightly top one 8- or 9-inch two-layer cake, or to fill three thinner layers.
- The whipped cream optionThe alternative given in the first line is simply whipped cream; the recipe does not say whether to sweeten it. Whipped cream weeps within a few hours, so assemble that version close to serving and keep it cold.