Chocolate Pastry Cream
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Chocolate pastry cream is a quick and simple pastry cream you can use to fill eclairs, cream puffs, or use in layered desserts and tarts. All you need is a whisk, a couple pantry staples, a decent bar of chocolate, and about 20 minutes of elbow grease.
Recipe Info
This recipe:
- Is simple. If you’ve ever cooked pastry cream, you’ll feel right at home with this flavor variation. Skip the butter, add chopped dark chocolate, and you’re done.
- Comes together quickly. You’ll spend about 15 to 20 minutes in the kitchen.
- Works with regular chocolate. As long as you’re using a decent quality bittersweet or dark chocolate, the recipe will work fine. Sure, chocolate chips melt better, but you don’t need to order a bag of expensive chips online just to make this pastry cream.
Making chocolate pastry cream for the first time? Be sure to check out the ingredient notes, step-by-step instructions.
Extra Learning
Before we jump in, here’s a few handy resources to help you nail this recipe:
- How to Temper Eggs. My quick guide to tempering eggs—a handy technique you’ll use when making this pastry cream. If you’ve never heard of it or never tried it before, be sure to give this a read.
- How to Make Pastry Cream. Your go-to guide for everything pastry cream. Learn the methods, uses, tips, and more. New to pastry creams? Start here.
Ingredients Notes and Substitutes
- Milk: Whole fat is best, but skim also works. Milk alternatives are fine, though they may slightly alter the final flavor. If using a sweetened variety, reduce the sugar in the recipe by half.
- Cornstarch: Ideal for its high thickening temperature. Substitute half the amount of potato starch, but allow the cooked milk mixture to cool slightly before adding to the eggs to prevent premature thickening. For more information, see my article on cornstarch versus potato starch.
- Sugar: Regular white sugar is fine, but brown sugar might be an interesting pairing with dark chocolate. Sugar substitutes are also okay.
- Chocolate: Dark chocolate with 60 to 70 percent cocoa solids is the default option. You could also go with flavored dark chocolate for a slightly different flavor. Combining dark and milk chocolate, or even going with milk chocolate only both work, but you should reduce the sugar so it’s not overly sweet.
- Vanilla Extract: Optional but recommended for enhancing flavor. Use half the amount typically used in vanilla pastry cream.
If you know a thing or two about pastry cream, you’ll notice there’s no butter in the list above. We add quite a lot of chocolate to the cream, making it quite rich, so no additional richness is needed.
How to Make Chocolate Pastry Cream
- Boil Milk: Measure milk into a pot, add vanilla extract and sugar. Heat until nearly boiling.
- Prep Yolks: While the milk heats, whisk the yolks, cornstarch, and about 2 tablespoons of the milk mixture (while it’s still lukewarm) in a large heatproof bowl. The addition of the milk mixture loosens the yolks and cornstarch, so exact measurements aren’t critical here. Set the bowl aside.
- Prep Chocolate: Finely chop the chocolate and set aside.
- Temper Eggs: Remove milk from heat as it nears boiling. Gradually add hot milk to yolks, whisking constantly to prevent curdling. Repeat 3 to 4 times until all milk is incorporated, stirring continuously.
- Cook Until Thick: Return the mixture to the pot. Cook over low or medium heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens and starts to bubble (2-4 mins).
Pour the mixture into the pot- Cook and stir until it thickens
- Add Chocolate: Remove from heat, add chopped chocolate, and whisk until melted and incorporated.
- Add the chopped chocolate
- Stir until chocolate melts
- Taste Test: Carefully taste the cream and add more sugar if needed.
- Strain (Optional): Strain if there’s unmelted chocolate or curdled yolks. Skip this step if the cream is smooth. This is your chance to redeem the cream if you messed up earlier (say, weren’t whisking when you should’ve been).
- Pour the chocolate mixture into the sieve
- Strain out chocolate and yolk bits
- Cover and Chill: Cover with plastic wrap, touching the surface of the cream. Cool at room temperature for 15 mins, then refrigerate.
- Whisk and Use: Whisk before using. Note that it shouldn’t be as stiff as other pastry creams due to the chocolate content.
- Chilled chocolate pastry cream
- Chop it up with a fork
- Whisk until smooth
This preparation method is the gold standard for pastry creams, but it’s not the only one. You could also go with the alternative approach of cooking everything (except the cornstarch and some milk) together until almost boiling and thickening it with cornstarch. I cover this approach in detail in the vanilla pastry cream article.
Tips
- Chill on a Plate. To speed up the chilling process, pour it onto a large plate or bowl. Or a couple of them. A larger surface area helps it cool down much faster.
- Make It in Advance. This pastry cream keeps for 3 to 4 days in the fridge, so you can easily prepare it the day before you need it. I usually make all the pastry creams I need a day earlier, and assemble the dessert the day I’m serving it.
- Keep Whisking. Whisking is crucial in this recipe to avoid curdling the yolks, so don’t skip it. If you do, you’ll end up with curdled yolks that don’t do your pastry creams any favors.
- Make it lighter. This cream is delicious but might be a bit rich if used in large quantities, like when filling cream puffs. To lighten it, fold in whipped cream and stabilize it with gelatin. This setup is called diplomat cream, and I got a big guide on making diplomat cream.
- Make it richer and sturdier. While this pastry cream pipes okayish, it’s not nearly as sturdy as buttercream. If you need a richer, more stable version that holds its shape well, and you don’t want to work with gelatin, turn it into cream mousseline. The linked article explains the whole process.
- Play With Chocolate Flavors. You can alter the flavor of this pastry cream simply by changing the chocolate you’re using. Say you’re making a dessert with cherries or something cherry-flavored. Instead of regular dark chocolate, grab a bar of cherry-flavored one that’ll further enhance the cherry flavor.
- Melt chocolate in milk and blend it. Fairly cheap chocolate sometimes has a hard time melting. If that’s the case for yours, try melting the chocolate when boiling the milk and run it through a blender instead of adding it as the last step. The downside is that the cream will take much longer to cool, but the chocolate should melt and incorporate better, avoiding the need to strain it.
Storage
You can store this pastry cream for 3 to 4 days in the fridge. Make sure the container is sealed tightly so that it doesn’t absorb any smells.
Similar Recipes to Try
Looking for more? Check out the following recipes:
- Chocolate whipped ganache. Looking for a chocolate frosting that’s fluffy and delicious? This one checks all the boxes.
- Bavarian cream. Skip the cornstarch, double the egg yolks, and you’ll end up with chocolate Bavarian cream that’s perfect for filling tarts and making layered desserts.
- Black Forest cream puffs. It’s a fairly time-consuming cream puffs recipe which combines cherry curd and chocolate diplomat cream (made off of this chocolate pastry cream) for that signature Black Forest flavor.
- Chocolate financiers. Financiers are these French mini cakes made with brown butter. Delicious, easy to make, but you need almond flour to pull them off.
- Pastry cream flavors. Want to test out other pastry creams? Here’s a list of 12+ flavors I already covered.
Servings: 2.5 cups
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 cups milk ~480g
- 4 medium egg yolks or large (about 60-70g)
- 4 tablespoons cornstarch ~40g
- 7 tablespoons sugar ~87g
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 oz dark chocolate ~113g
Instructions
- Boil Milk: Combine milk, vanilla extract, and half the sugar in a pot. Heat until almost boiling.2 cups milk, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 7 tablespoons sugar
- Prep Yolks: While the milk heats, whisk yolks, cornstarch, and 2 tablespoons of the milk mixture (while it's still lukewarm) in a bowl.4 medium egg yolks, 4 tablespoons cornstarch
- Chop Chocolate: Finely chop chocolate and set aside.
- Temper Eggs: Gradually add hot milk to yolks, whisking constantly to blend without curdling.
- Thicken Cream: Return mixture to pot and cook over low/medium heat until thick (2-4 mins), stirring constantly.
- Add Chocolate: Off the heat, whisk in chopped chocolate until melted and smooth.4 oz dark chocolate
- Taste and Adjust: Taste and add sugar if needed.
- Strain (Optional): Strain if needed to remove unmelted chocolate or curdled yolks.
- Chill: Cover with plastic wrap and cool at room temperature for 15 mins, then refrigerate.
- Whisk Before Using: Whisk before piping.
Notes
This recipe uses less sugar than most other pastry cream recipes out there. Make sure to taste the pastry cream and adjust the sugar if needed. It should be sweet, but not so that the vanilla flavor is barely noticeable.
Tried this recipe?Let us know how it was!