Boston Cream Pie | Avid Baker's Challenge

Each month of 2013, the Avid Bakers are baking a different recipe from King Arthur Flour.  This month's recipe is Boston Cream Pie.

Boston cream pie is a traditional American dessert that has a very long history. In fact, it has its own Wikipedia page, and is the official dessert of Massachusetts.

The yellow cake itself does not include a lot of oil or butter, and gets all of its richness from eggs and milk. It is baked as a single layer, sliced in half, filled with rich pastry cream, and covered in a chocolate ganache.

The most difficult part of making this cake is making the pastry cream. The cake and ganache were both really easy.

If you've seen this post, you know that my oven's computer went haywire and developed a mind of its own (It's getting fixed Tuesday, yay!). So... because this cake is baked in a single 9 inch cake pan, I decided to see if my toaster oven was up to actually baking it. Guess what? It was! In fact, the cake was done five minutes early.

Recipe Notes:

You will need a 9 inch cake pan, a strainer, a good whisk, and a long bread knife (to slice the cake in half). I used a stand mixer to mix the cake, but a hand mixer is fine. 

I used King Arthur Flour's Unbleached Cake Flour Blend, as called for in the recipe, but you could make your own by mixing 2 T of cornstarch with 1 cup of all purpose flour. I like the fact that King Arthur Flour's cake flour is unbleached and chemical free. 

Make the pastry cream a day in advance. If you are pressed for time, you can substitute instant vanilla pudding. It's not quite as flavorful, but I'd keep a small box on hand in case you have a "pastry cream malfunction."

Recipes and Links:

You can find the recipe and directions for the cake and the ganache here. You can find the recipe for pastry cream here.