Fresh fruit creme patisserie.

When I got invited to a recent dinner party and was asked to bring a dessert my desire to impress comes out to play. I really do love baking and I don't do nearly as much of it as I would like to. With a full time job, a passion for surfing and photography there doesn't leave a lot of time to be creative in the kitchen. Also being just me and my partner in the house it's never practical to make a big dessert, although my partner and myself will happily eat our way through a whole dessert designed for eight neither of our waste bands will like it.

Here is my first ever attempt at making a fresh fruit creme patisserie.

So firstly I decided to cheat! as it's my first attempt at making the desert I used a shop bought packet of puff pastry. Left for a few hours to defrost then rolled into an even flat square. Next I used a knife to score around the edge of the pastry around an inch wide all the way around. As I wasn't following a recipe for this step I cooked in an oven heated to 200'C for around 30 minutes but kept checking every few minutes as I wasn't sure if the pastry was rolled quit thin and i didn't want it to burn and equally I didn't want soggy unpuffed pastry.

With the pastry out of the oven, I left it to cool. Once cool I flattened the bit in the middle and squashed out the puffs.

Now it's time to make the creme patisserie, and this time I do need a recipe to follow. Using a recipe from the BBC's website  I mix together four egg yolks and  65g of  caster sugar until it turned a pale blonde colour. Then I added 15g of plain flour and 15g of cornflour and whisked. Once mixed together I left to one side. 

Now it's time to infuse the milk with vanilla. Now the recipe said to use a vanilla paste but in true Amanda style I chose not to fully follow the recipe and use a fresh vanilla pod and scrape out the seeds. Adding the vanilla to 350ml of whole milk I heated to a gentle simmer and then let cool for a few minutes.

The next step I was particularly worried about. Adding half the hot milk to the egg mix and keeping it moving in the bowl and avoiding scrambling the eggs with the hot liquid. Once I had succeeded in not making scrambled eggs I added the mixture back to the remaining hot milk and mix together over a heat whilst constantly mixing until a thick sauce was created. 

Breathing a sigh of relief and letting the creme cool I was home and dry to finishing off my dessert. 

Loading the creme patisserie onto the puff pastry and spreading out it was then time to neatly cut the fruit and arrange onto the creme.

The end result was a delicious dessert, and very proud of myself for making something so delicious.