Club Baked: Boston Cream Pie. I've got some splainin to do.

The Boston Cream Pie. I'll save my review for the end of my post as I think it requires a bit of background...


I made my first batch of pastry cream the night before, as suggested, to speed things up the next day. You caught that I said first batch, so something must have gone wrong, no? All was going fine, but all of the sudden, this happened:


I'm not sure, it never boiled or even bubbled as the recipe said it should for 2 minutes. It started to thicken and look tasty, but being a novice, I wanted to see some bubble action and set a timer, to make sure I was doing this per the book. I think (speculation, of course) that because I had substituted heavy cream for the whole milk as the recipe suggested that it may, with the additional fat, have set up far sooner than if I had stuck with milk. But I can't have milk, so whatevs.




So, the next afternoon, I'm in the kitchen working on the cakes. Place them in the oven, insert a bamboo drink stirrer because that's what I've got and the thing looked clean, honest. But after 20 minutes of cool down, I flipped over the cake pan and ended up with this:



*Lots of expletives*

So, I take a break, hubs and I eat the half baked cake off the plate, determine it is delicious and decide to screw the heavy cream in the cake batter and use goat's milk instead (I tend not to use it as much in desserts because sometimes the flavor is pretty distinct). Round two: I leave the cakes in for a full 30 minutes and turn up the oven to 350F. We usually bake smaller quantities in a toaster oven, so big oven baking was an eye opener. Lesson learned: the big oven does not accurately heat - at 350 my oven was reading slightly below 325. Yikes. We're renters.


I then continue to dirty up pots by making the chocolate sauce. I think this came out as it was supposed to on the first try. Thank goodness.

By now, my kitchen is a disaster. Hubs comes in and cleans off a little spot for me to assemble and I get to work. I flip over my cakes. One looks good and one has this sort of custardy film on the bottom. I say screw it, scrape it off and continue to work on getting this thing put together.



I fill it with some seriously heavenly pastry cream (seriously) and top it with the pretty average frosting. Sadly, at this point, I was so over the cake and staring at a kitchen that looked like this:


So I chucked the cake in the fridge and left the clean up for the morning.

I thought distancing my self a bit from the cake would give me time to get over all the trouble it gave me and let me give a more honest review of the cake. I love the pastry filling. That stuff was delicious. I was licking the bowl and really, really enjoyed that stuff.

 

The finished cake, though, left me wondering what happened to the delicious half baked mess from the night before*. Because properly cooked, I don't know, the cake wasn't my fav. It was moist, airy and yet still somehow not delightful. I think the prior Baked cakes had my expectations pretty high. The frosting was ok, but I preferred the one we made on the last cake - the Sunday Night cake.

Overall, the pastry cream was amazing. The rest was just ok for me. I would make the filling again in a heartbeat and fill pastries and doughnuts and eat it with a spoon straight from the bowl hidden in the back of the fridge...But I would probably find another cake and frosting recipe. These just didn't do it for me.

To see other baker's (more unbiased) reviews, check out the Club: Baked post. For the recipe, head on over to Brooke's Bountiful Kitchen.

*Hubs did like the cake.

13 lovely comments:

  1. I'm glad I spy a bottle of booze in the background of your kitchen picture. Most of my adventures in baking require a drink or two to appreciate the undercooked/overcooked/sloppy/not set product of said adventures.

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  2. Glad I'm not the only one lol! :)

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  3. Great looking cake. You have a very nice looking kitchen... even with the mess. I have an old ugly one. I sat this one out... but I think I might just make the pastry cream instead of the cake and eat that!

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  4. I called my pastry cream custard because it was so dang thick...and lumpy! I usually bake at night with an adult beverage (or two).

    I love your cake stand. Very cute!

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  5. Thanks, Joan. I bought the cake stand for $8 or something crazy at a second hand shop. I'm in love with it too.

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  6. I LOVED the frosting, but I skipped the Sunday Night cake, so I might have to do some frosting comparison-type research to decide which I like more. The agree that the pastry cream was delish and the cake was not!

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  7. Your cake came out beautiful! I agree the best part was the pastry cream! Yum!

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  8. Lulu - I liked the frosting, but it was more glazey and less fluffy when compared to the sunday night cake frosting. i preferred the thick gob of the sunday night frosting as opposed to the thin layer this cake has. If you loved this frosting you are gonna love the sunday night cake.

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  9. Wow Jess. You're a trooper. Even in the best scenario, this recipe is a huge mess in the kitchen. But the discovery of delicious pastry cream was worth every dirty dish. I love the last photo with all the layers. It looks perfect. Too bad the cake wasn't as good as the pastry cream. I enjoyed the glaze, but mine was a bit thicker than some others I've seen.

    P.S. I highly recommend an oven thermometer. I avoided buying one for a long time but now can't live without it. You can get one for $10 bucks at Bed, Bath & Beyond. My oven is 20-25 degrees cooler than the temperature reads. Also you can tell when your oven is really up to temperature. Mine is never ready after the little beep goes off. Usually takes twice as long to get to the right temp.

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  10. I agree - This was not my favorite. I don't think I am a big Boston Cream Pie fan so that is probably why. Yours looks great (even if it wasn't your fave) and I love your kitchen! I know what you mean about your oven - we are renters too. :-)

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  11. Wow! You are a trooper to keep going with the recipe.....way to go! It looks great though.......sorry you didn't love it. I totally agree with an oven thermometer......my oven runs hot and this has saved many a desserts of mine!

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  12. LOL- Jess, you're awesome girl! Love the post and in the end the cake looks great. This is the 'learning' part right. I welcome the knowledge and the expletives do go with it.I think we collectively agree at this point about that vanilla custard. Way to stick it out! and I also have an oven thermometer... 2 actually. My oven is consistently 20 - 25 degrees cooler than what I set it to bake at...so I up the temp.

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  13. totally worth the clean up, Jess! yummmeeeeee!

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