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Hi everyone, I'm Claire Saffitz. Welcome to my home kitchen. Today we have an episode of Dessert Person for you that is going to feature a recipe I've been meaning to do for a really long time and this is my spin on it. I'm going to show you a Boston cream pie, but not a classic one. I'm going to make it into a layer cake. And it uses a lot of cool technique and like stays very close to the classic flavors, but I think it's kind of an upgrade cuz you get all the layers. And a lot of layers makes everything better. You got the Boston cream donut. Is that the original or is that a play on a cake that exists?
No, that's the Boston cream donut is the spin-off of the pie, which is not a pie, it's a cake. And when anything is like a Boston anything, I my guess is that it comes from like the Fannie Farmer cookbook. But I don't actually know the origins of Boston cream pie and why they call it pie when it's just a cake. So, there's three components to this recipe. There's the cake layers, the filling, and the glaze on top. I don't have all the ingredients out because it's just not worth showing you because it's kind of like a very repetitive and it's a lot of little things. So, we're going to make a very plain sponge cake. And then the glaze is like a shiny chocolate ganache glaze. So, starting with the cake layers, I have eight whole
eggs, sugar, some melted butter, pinch of salt, flour, and vanilla. Like very, very basic ingredients. And then when I show you the other components, I'll I'll bring those ingredients out and call them out. Now, for special equipment for the cake, I have you do need a stand mixer cuz like we're going to whip a lot of eggs. So, really need a stand mixer with a whisk. And then I have two 9-in cake pans. They're not greased or lined because this is a sponge cake. We're going to actually not grease the pan because we want the cake to rise and maintain its height. And when you grease the pan, it can't grab on to the sides and it tends
to not rise as high. I have these baking cores which heat. I like to use these for sponge cake. They're not really necessary, but I just like to use them. So, basically what happens is it conducts heat and it helps the center of the cake rise and not fall. For this style of sponge cake, I have a saucepan of water behind me that's heating. It's kind of just under boiling. And then a whisk. This is called a skimmer. This is a really helpful tool for folding this volume of eggs. And I need to sift the flour and that's really it. This version of this cake, I have made it with 10 whole eggs. That makes a really large volume of batter.
This time I'm doing eight. And with eight eggs, I'm going to divide it between two 9-in cake pans and bake two equal layers. And then each layer I'm going to split into two, so I'm going to have four layers total. So, eight eggs is kind of the right amount of volume for my two pans. Let me get my eggs into my bowl. These are eight large eggs. So, now I'm going to add my sugar and my salt, actually. I'm going to bring over my saucepan of water. It's You can see it's steaming a little bit. And I'm going to use this to warm my mixture. So, I have a just a whisk that I'm using by hand.
This is what's called a bain-marie. Basically like a warm water bath. The idea here is to warm the eggs and start to work a little bit of air into the mixture. All of the leavening and that light texture comes from incorporating air into the eggs. This is at around 113° F. I'm going to pop the bowl into my stand mixer. I have that my whisk attachment. And now we're going to whip this. So I'm going to start on kind of medium speed and work my way up to high. This will take a couple minutes. And just so you know, once you start this process, you have to carry it all the way through. So I have my oven already on 350 with a rack in the center and my pan's ready to go.
Okay, so here you can see the texture. I just turned the mixer off. This is after maybe 5 minutes of whipping. It's very thick. It does this beautiful ribbon thing where basically it sits on top of itself. The other thing about a ribbon that you're looking for at this point is it should take several seconds. It should slowly disappear back into the surface and settle down, but you should be able to see it for a while. I'm going to take the bowl out of the stand mixer. And now we're going to finish it by hand. I have here my remaining ingredients, my butter, my flour, and my vanilla.
We're going to start by sifting the flour over the surface. And we're going to do this in stages because what happens is it's too much flour to just sit on top and then evenly incorporate into the batter. So I did about maybe a quarter. And now you can see why I'm using this tool, this skimmer, because it really helps me to fold very gently and incorporate the flour with as like few strokes as possible. So we're going to continue to fold. And now I'm going to add the rest, the last addition of flour. Now before I see the last traces of flour disappear, I'm going to start to stream in my butter. That's the last step is to incorporate the fat. I'm going to add about half of it. And with that same folding motion,
incorporate the last of the flour and the butter. I'm going to add in the rest of the butter, a couple of teaspoons of vanilla extract. And now I want to work pretty quickly. You don't have to like stress too hard. So, basically, I want to get this all mixed together and into my pans and into the oven pretty quickly. All right, so I'm going to pour I'm going to eyeball this batter. I'm going to look at to do about half. All right, this is pretty good. They look relatively even. So, what I do with sponge cake is to pop any really large bubbles cuz I want a more uniform crumb.
Give it a nice little tap. Okay, these are going to go into the oven 350 side by side. So, we're going to bake these until the cakes are golden and puffed and a tester comes out clean, and they'll be pulling away a little bit from the sides. Your typical Boston cream pie has a vanilla custard filling. And so, today I'm making because I'm doing a layer cake, I need extra stability in that custard to support the layers and to keep everything like stacked and set. So, I'm doing a style of filling that uses pastry cream as a base. Pastry cream is just another word for like basically vanilla pudding.
Um but it's very, very stable. So, it's called a diplomat cream. And it basically uses gelatin for stabilizing, and then it incorporates whipped cream to kind of like lighten everything. It's incredibly delicious. So, I have my saucepan and my burner. I have 2 cups of milk. And I'm going to add a big squeeze of vanilla paste. I'm going to get this at a kind of bare simmer, like a little bit below boiling. So, I'm going to let that warm, and then I'm going to turn to my gelatin. So, with gelatin, you have to I'm using powdered unflavored gelatin, the like very typical thing you would find in any grocery store. I have 2 Tbsp of cold water. I'm pouring that into a little dish. And then 1 tsp of powdered unflavored gelatin. I'm going to gently and evenly sprinkle
the over the water. This is going to help each little granule of gelatin to hydrate. It's going to absorb the water and soften. I'm going to combine my salt. It's a big pinch of salt. My sugar. And my cornstarch. Now, I'm going to add I have five yolks. I'm going to whisk this together and I'm going to whisk really slowly at first. It's going to look like there is too much starch and sugar for the yolks, but it will incorporate and it will become a mixture that you can whisk and like get your whisk through. Like sort of mash everything together in the beginning.
Everything is well combined. The mixture is starting to kind of thin out a little bit and become whiskable. So, I'm going to continue to whisk this really vigorously. This is why I'm kind of holding it down here. I get better leverage. Going to continue to whisk it vigorously until it is very pale. It's already kind of getting that pale color. So, I'm just doing this as my I already have my milk mixture steaming. So, that's where I want it. This is 6 Tbsp of cubed cold unsalted butter. That's going to go in at the end. And I have my gelatin here. You can see that the gelatin has already kind of started to solidify and it's no longer liquid. The heavy cream is going to come
in at the very end before I start with assembly on the cake and we're going to mix that into the cold set cream. So, like this mixture is going to get cooked and chilled. And it has to set. So, that's going to take a while, but I do have one that I made last night. So, we don't have to wait. Okay. So, here you see I have this kind of It's a little bit fluffy. This light and thick and very pale yolk mixture. So, when I do that when I lift it up and it falls off the whisk, similar to that mixture of eggs and sugar for the sponge cake, it makes this ribbon. Like when I go like this. So, I'm going to take this off the heat.
We're going to slowly incorporate the hot dairy into the eggs, and that is to gently bring up the temperature. And by the way, if you're when you're making this, you don't want to mix together the eggs and sugar and starch in advance. You want Once you start on that step, you need to kind of can go straight through. And that's because what ends up happening is like the combination of starch and sugar and yolk, when it's left just to sit, it will often become like they'll get little hardened bits of yolk, and that is not going to go away once you cook your custard. So, you don't want that. It's not going to make for a smooth pastry cream.
Okay, so because the mixture is really thick, I had to pour in stages and hold the bowl, but now it's loosened up, and I can just slowly pour in the rest of the milk mixture. Now, now I can pour everything back into my saucepan. And we're going to cook it. All right, so before I start cooking this, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to get set up with another clean bowl and a strainer, cuz we're going to strain the custard when it's done. And I want a clean bowl for it to go into. And I'm also So, this is not on the heat yet. I also want to look at my sponge.
I have a cooling rack here for the cake when it comes out. I'm going to cool it upside down. And that is going to help the cake maintain maximum volume and height as it cools. What happens as cake cools is the steam escapes, and at that point the crumb is like very, very delicate, and it hasn't really set, and it hasn't like established its structure yet. And so, by letting it cool upside down, it can it can let that steam escape while still maintaining its height. And that's why we didn't grease the pan. So, let me just take a look. Okay, so when I look at the layer, I have my cake tester. Comes out clean.
It's nice and springy. So, this is going to go upside down. Okay, same thing here. So, sponge is done. Let's go back to our filling. Okay, so let's get this cooking. I'm going to I want This needs to come to a boil. So, it's very important for the thickening power of the cornstarch that the mixture comes to a boil. And that like the eggs will thicken at a at a lower temp, but it has to boil for the cornstarch. So, I'm going to get this on like medium heat. And the mixture is already warm. So, that means it doesn't take as much for it to come up to that boiling point.
Okay, so this looks great. I'm going to take it off the heat. Now, we're going to add our gelatin. So, our gelatin has been sitting here for like at least 10 minutes. You need that amount of time for it to soften. And you want the gelatin to go into the mixture while it's hot but not quite boiling because that is going to ensure that it fully melts into the mixture, but you don't really want to boil gelatin. That is actually bad for the setting power. And now, we're going to add our cubed butter. And it's going to look like the butter is making the mixture more liquid. And when it's hot, that is true cuz the butter is melting. But, when butter is cold, it's firm. So, this is actually going to help the
mixture firm up when it's chilled. It's going to go into my strainer and into my bowl. And you do want to strain this mixture while it's hot because it's more liquid. So, it's much easier to strain at this stage when hot versus like after you've chilled it. There really wasn't much for the strainer to catch, but it's just to ensure that it's super smooth. So, this is basically like a really good quality delicious vanilla pudding. And this is our base for our diplomat cream. And it has the gelatin in there. So, I'm just smoothing out the surface. And now, we want to let this cool and set. Gelatin's going to set. It's going to get cold. The butter's going to solidify. And we want to I'm going to do that in
the fridge, but I'm going to put some plastic over the surface because we don't want a skin to form. And but pastry cream also lasts a really long time. You could do this several days in advance. This is going to go into the fridge. Our layers have cooled. They've been upside down. Let's take a look. They look great. You can see that the tops have like maintained that gentle dome. They didn't collapse at all. They look great. I'm very excited. So, I have You don't actually need a separate 9-in pan, but I have one here for assembling the cake. You could just assemble everything in one of the cake pans you just used. But this one's a little taller, so it's
actually it just makes it easier. So, we want to unmold the cakes. Now, if you recall, I did not grease or line the pans at all. So, that getting them out is a little bit of a negotiation. I have my small offset spatula here. Okay. Uh the process of getting it off the bottom is really like you're just going to peel it off with your fingertips. And the reason you can do that is because the batter is this like foam, basically. And it there's all these little air bubbles, and it creates like a little film on the bottom, and you can just kind of peel it away. So, I get my fingertips underneath the bottom.
Not the best, not the worst. This can be the bottom. This layer's like a little beaten up. Here's the top. And here's where you can peel off that top layer of brown. And you can see what's underneath is this really nice, soft, bouncy, uniform sponge. Okay. So, here's my first layer. I'm going to unmold the second one, repeat that process with the second layer, and then we're going to split them. And now I'm going to use my serrated knife to cut them in half horizontally. So, this is called torting. And what I like to do is just kind of get eye level. And you want to just make some little sawing motions. And once I'm through where I can't see the knife anymore, I start to rotate. And this helps me to maintain that same like level of the knife, that
same depth. And I just kind of bring the knife all the way around with me. And I almost always keep my other hand flat on top. That helps me to just feel where the knife is. All right. So, now I've gone the full circumference of the cake. And now what I'm going to do, now that I have that cut, I'm going to follow that line and slice clear through. And when I'm doing this, I'd like to do really short little rapid strokes. That helps me get through without tearing through a lot of the crumb of the cake. Okay. So, I'm all the way through. I'm actually going to grab my rack again cuz this is where I'm going to hold the layers. So, here's the first layer.
Here's the second layer. You can see with that technique you have something really flat and even. So, now I'm just going to repeat that same process with my other layer. This is a batch of that pastry cream that I made. So, the first thing I want to do is just stir this up to help to smooth out the texture. And it's going to kind of like destroy that gelatin matrix, but it will reform when it chills again. So, you just want to work it to smooth it out a little bit. You can see that it's already loosening up. And that is because we need to fold some whipped cream into it. I have 1 cup of heavy whipped of heavy cream that I'm going to whip.
So, I'm going to whip this to um to somewhere between like medium and firm peaks. I am going to make a little bit of a soak. I'm going to lightly soak the layers. This is just milk, a tablespoon or two of Demerara sugar. You could just use granulated. And I added a pinch of salt, and I'm going to add some vanilla extract. So, I'm just going to really use this to enhance the vanilla flavor of the layers. Usually a soak for a cake is like a simple syrup, but I don't like how that adds so much sugar and sweetness to it. So, I feel like milk is a really good If you're already having dairy in the recipe, I think milk is a great base.
I have my whipped cream here. This is sort of between medium and firm. And then I actually ran the whisk through the pastry cream to make sure there's no lumps. So, this is nice and smooth. And now we're just going to fold these together. I'll do about half of the cream. So, we're going to fold this together. You can see how light and like glossy and smooth it is. This It's so delicious. So, once everything is nicely incorporated, we're going to start our assembly. So, when doing it this way, just know that the first layer you put in, that's going to be the top of your cake. So, pick the layer you like best. Fit that layer into the bottom of your pan. And now, I have plenty of crumb exposed here. So,
another reason you want the crumb exposed by like peeling off that layer or cutting with a knife is so that it can pull the soak down into the sponge. So, I'm going to give it but like a little dab. So, I'm not covering every like square centimeter. I'm just giving it kind of an all-over even soak. All right. Now, I'm going to add my filling. So, I'm going to do kind of a heaping cup, and I'm really just measuring so that I can keep the layers somewhat consistent. So, I'm going to go in with my offset and just spread this out into an even layer. Now, next layer goes down. When you're doing cake construction, it's If you have any like really wonky layers, like ones where it maybe a broke or you cobbled together like
pieces to make a layer, those should go in the middle cuz like they will be held together by the outer layers. So, none of mine are like too bad, but I'll just put one of these down. Next, you're going to put down your next layer, and then I like to give it a little pat just so it's everything is in contact. Help it kind of start to adhere. A bit more soak, filling. If you are building the cake in one of the cake pans that you baked in, this is where you really want it to have high sides and what you might end up like rising above the lip the side of the pan, and that's where you want a lot of plastic overhang. The plastic is what's going to kind of keep it together even if it goes rises out of the pan.
So, then the next one's going to go in. I am going to do it this way so that I can put my little patch on it. Ditto with this. More soak, the last portion of filling. And you can see it's thick and light, but super spreadable. When this goes back into the fridge, the gelatin sets again and forms a kind of like gel matrix and will become firmer. Now, the final layer is going to go on. I'm actually going to soak it before I apply it to the cake cuz I'm going to put it soaked side down. You don't really have to do this, but I like to do it because it avoids a layer that gets
really wet, and then when you invert it, like that wet layer would be against the cake pan, and then it doesn't like you can't get a slice out as cleanly. So, I'm going to soak Which side am I going to soak? I'm this side and put it soaked side down. All right. So, I just used all of the remaining soak. Now, we're going to place this over the filling like so. Tuck it into the pan. Now, I'll give everything like a little pat down to try to get everything nice and even. Okay. And now, another thing I like to do is really pull the sides of the plastic up and over the surface. And this not only helps it to not dry
out, but what it does is it kind of like creates some tension along the walls of the cake that help me to make sure that the layers themselves are aligned. And then what I can also do, I'll show you. I can go in with my spatula, you can use a butter knife, and I just like run it up against the side of the cake. Okay. This is going to go into the fridge, and now the cream the filling is still really cold, but it just needs a chance for that gelatin to set up again. So, I would let this chill again for like at least an hour. You can see how there's like a little bit of a wobble. You want it just to like firm up. So, that's going to go in.
The glaze is really just a version of ganache. Ganache is a mixture of heavy cream and chocolate. I have some dark chocolate here. This is like a 66%. It's like 5 oz or so. I have 3/4 of a cup of heavy cream. I'm going to warm this up. I don't need to boil it. I just need to bring it to like just below a simmer. And then just to enhance the kind of like glazing qualities, I'm going to add a little butter. Just a tablespoon of corn syrup. It's there to help give it some nice gloss. So, I'm going to add a pinch of salt, and throw that in.
I'm going to add my butter. And so, for this mixture, we're going to let it sit here, and the chocolate is going to gently warm through and melt. And that will take a few minutes, and then we're going to stir. So, I'm just going to set this aside, and while that melting and coming together, I'm going to grab the cake and unmold it and get it ready for the chocolate glaze. So, this is going to be a glaze I'm going to pour over the cake. And anytime I'm doing that, I always set the cake, or whatever it is I'm glazing, on a wire rack inside of a baking sheet to catch all the drips from the glaze. So, I'm going to show you here I have my glazing setup. I had these cake rounds from a different cake project.
This is a 10-in round. I trimmed it to try to get it sized more for my 9-in cake. I'm going to unwrap it, and as I was explaining when I assembled, we're going to invert it. So, that's why we constructed it so that the bottom layer is like the nice layer, and that's going to become the top. I'm going to put my cake round down. I'm going to flip it over. And lift off the pan. Peel off the plastic. Now, you can see as I was saying before that like we don't have this perfect like perfectly defined layers. So, I'm going to go in with my offset spatula, and smooth the little areas where the filling is like peaking out. And I'm
going to use this same spatula for applying the glaze. Now, the glaze is poured and that's how you get this nice really smooth finish, but often with a glaze like you'll need to help it down and around the sides. All right, so I'm going to stir my chocolate mixture. And I'm going to add a little bit of vanilla extract. Now, generally with Boston cream pie, the glaze is really more applied to the surface like to the top and not so much the sides. So, I'm going to let this kind of cascade this down the sides as it wants to and not worry about like full coverage all over the place. It has thickened nicely. So, I'm going to pour this over the cake. And whenever I'm glazing, I like
to pour it from the center and let it kind of go where it's going to go and then I can help it down any bare spots with my spatula. Okay. So, then I want some nice kind of natural drips. So, I'm going to sort of help it along, let it fall down the sides. And I don't want the layer on top to be too thick, so that's partly why I'm moving it around. All right. And so now the ganache is really starting to set because of the chilled cake. So, I don't want to fuss with it too much. But I want to wait until it's fully set to cut it. And so, what I'm going to do is I'm going to transfer it to the fridge and just let it go that last like few minutes to set.
The general rule of thumb with anything made with gelatin is 4 hours for setting. This definitely could have used longer to chill. It's starting that bottom layer of filling is like compressing a little. If you're making this at home, definitely like I would recommend an overnight chill. Just so everything is super solid. This one I like rushed it cuz of our timing. But I'm going to cut it and it'll be fine. And I'm using a serrated knife. I love the feeling of a serrated knife going through layers of sponge. It just like cuts right through. It's a very satisfying feeling. Looks so good. This is actually an enormous slice.
I'm very excited to taste it. For its size it's actually really light. It's like the sponge is super light. We lighten the filling with the whipped cream. I think it's a nice I'm happy with the thickness of the gauche on top and it's like the right proportion of all the components. Mhm. In some ways I like I don't gravitate towards chocolate desserts because I think the chocolate is kind of overwhelming and overpowering. It's just such a strong flavor. And like this use of chocolate I think is so perfect. It's so complementary to
all the other components and you really taste it but it's balanced with everything. It doesn't overwhelm. And the cream and the texture of the filling is like so luxurious and smooth and also light. But it does kind of give vanilla pudding like it's it's really kind of homey at the same time. So I think it's a big a great celebration cake. You could split make one layer and split it you know make it more like a classic Boston cream pie um or just make the components. Filling on its own would be like a delicious vanilla pudding dessert. In fact that's kind of how we ate the leftover. So I hope you try making this cake the whole thing uh just as I showed you or like one or more components. Everything
on its own is delicious and then together it's like you hope a dessert would be which is a greater than the sum of its parts. So thank you so much for watching and don't forget to like and subscribe.
