374 pastry cream recipes

Italian rum cake with a dense sour cream butter cake sliced into six layers, soaked with dark rum, and filled with lemon pastry cream. A showstopping celebration dessert.

Aunt Bee's apple pie tucks sliced apples in a pre-cooked sauce of orange juice, honey, cinnamon, and butter inside a tender cream cheese pastry. A Southern-style fall pie with a pre-cooked filling.

Fruit tarts with a retro cheese pastry shell filled with orange and pineapple pastry cream, finished with sharp cheddar. Sweet meets savory in this cheddar-apple-pie-school classic.

Italian pastry puffs with lemon-scented biscotti dough wrapped around silky vanilla-almond pastry cream. Baked in a cupcake pan until golden, these old-school treats are worth every minute.

An elegant French strawberry chibouste-style dessert: pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue, set with gelatin, molded against fresh strawberries over a thin genoise base. A patisserie classic at home.

Hungarian cheesecake with sieved cottage cheese, sour cream, and lemon zest in a homemade pastry crust, layered with pineapple and raisins. A European-style baked cheesecake.

Parisienne fruit tart layers crisp puff pastry with vanilla cream and bananas, glazes it with apricot, then crowns it with whipped cream, grapes, and pineapple. A showpiece French pastry from simple shortcuts.

Zesty apricot cream filling combines apricot jam with sherry, lemon zest, and orange juice for a bright pastry cream. Egg yolks thicken it into a silken filling for tarts, eclairs, or layer cakes.

Nancy's ice cream kolacky: a three-ingredient Eastern European-style cookie where vanilla ice cream replaces liquid and eggs, creating a tender pastry dough filled with jam and dusted with powdered sugar. A Christmas cookie-tray favorite.

Apple pie with apricot glaze layers tart Granny Smith apples over a custard pastry cream and finishes with a layer of apricot preserves under the top crust. A French-style twist on classic American apple pie.

Boston cream pie from scratch: two tender cake-flour layers split by a thick vanilla pastry cream and finished with a glossy chocolate glaze that drips down the sides. The classic Massachusetts dessert, every component homemade.

Italian-style pineapple ricotta cheesecake with a tender shortcrust pastry, a hidden layer of crushed pineapple, and a light ricotta-cream-cheese filling lifted with whipped egg whites.

No-bake raspberry cream cheese pie with a decorative snowflake pastry top, sweetened condensed milk, lemon juice, and almond extract. A stunning holiday dessert.

Kolache cookies with a cream cheese pastry dough folded around fruit jam and dusted with powdered sugar. A three-ingredient Czech-style pastry that melts in your mouth.

Hawaiian delight cookies with a cream cheese pastry shell filled with macadamia nuts, coconut, and brown sugar. A mini tart-style cookie baked in muffin pans.

Single-crust pastry pie shell with margarine, blind-baked at high heat until golden in 10 minutes. A basic flaky pastry that works as a base for cream pies, custards, and fruit fillings.