Bavarian Cream (Crème Bavaroise)
Also known as Creme Bavarois, Bavarian cream is a light, vanilla-flavored cream that you can use as a filling, frosting, or as a dessert served on its own.
- Prep time
- 10 min
- Cook time
- 5 min
- Yield
- 4 servings
- Difficulty
- MEDIUM
Ingredients
Quantities are shown as originally provided.
- 250 g Whole Milk (3% fat)
- 75 g Granulated sugar
- 60 g Egg yolk (yolk of approx. 3 eggs)
- 2 teaspoon Vanilla extract
- 4 Gelatin sheets (or 6.8g (1.5 teaspoon) gelatin powder)
- 230 g Heavy cream (36% fat, use it very cold)
Instructions
- 1
Soak the gelatin sheets in cold water.
- 2
In a large enough bowl, with the help of a Hand whisk, whisk together sugar, egg yolk and the vanilla until slightly fluffy for about 1-2 minutes.
- 3
Bring milk to simmering in a saucepan on medium heat. Make sure it is simmering but not boiling.
- 4
Pour the warm milk mixture over the egg yolk mixture slowly while whisking vigorously with a Hand whisk. This stage is effectively tempering the egg yolks.
- 5
Pour the mixture back into the saucepan and cook on medium heat until temperature reached 82C / 180F.
- 6
Remove the cream from the stove as soon as cream reaches the desired temperature. Do not cook it further as the mixture will curdle.
- 7
Squeeze excess water from the gelatin sheets and stir them into the hot cream. Alternatively, if using gelatin powder, mix together the gelatin powder with 1 tablespoon of cold water then when thickened into a paste, immediately mix into the warm custard.
- 8
Place the custard into a shallow bowl or container and cover the entire surface with plastic wrap to avoid skin forming on top. Let it come to room temperature in about an hour. Do not let it chill as the gelatin will set too hard.
- 9
Once the custard is at room temperature, whip very cold heavy cream until early stiff peaks. Do not overbeat.
- 10
Fold the whipped cream very gently into the custard in 2-3x portions.
- 11
As a filling, you can use this Bavarian cream straight away. As a frosting to pipe, chill it for 2-3 hours for the gelatin to set.
- 12
As an individual dessert, pour the cream into your mold and refrigerate it for a minimum of 4 hours. Also, you might want to increase the gelatin in the recipe to be able to neatly unmold the dessert.