25 pastry cream recipes

Thai mung bean pastries (khanom thuay) with a sweet mung bean flour base topped with coconut-rice flour cream and toasted yellow mung beans. A colorful, no-bake Thai dessert.

Lemon cream and nut cookies, buttery shortbread ovals spread with homemade lemon curd and crowned with toasted almonds, hazelnuts, walnuts, prunes, rum-soaked raisins, and candied orange. A jewel-box holiday cookie.

A show-stopping rhubarb tart in an almond pastry shell, served with fresh strawberry-kirsch sauce and homemade cinnamon ice cream. Three components, one unforgettable spring dessert.

Kolachky dough made with cream cheese, butter, egg yolks, and flour. An overnight pastry dough that rolls out flaky and tender for filling with fruit or nuts.

Applejack apple slab pie bakes 25 sliced tart apples with cinnamon and butter between a shortening pastry crust in a sheet pan, then drizzles with a sweet cream glaze. Crowd-feeding holiday pie.

Old-fashioned stovetop apple dessert with layers of pastry squares and spiced apples cooked in a kettle. This vintage pot pie simmers until tender, then gets served with cream.

Rigo Jancsi, the classic Hungarian chocolate cake with two layers of rich sponge filled with rum-spiked chocolate cream and topped with a glossy chocolate glaze. An elegant European pastry.

Old-world poppy seed cake with a buttery egg yolk dough topped with ground poppy seeds mixed in cream and orange zest. A traditional Eastern European pastry rolled and baked.

Ukrainian almond crescents with a tender sour cream yeast pastry rolled around a ground almond and brown sugar filling. Flaky, nutty, and golden, these Eastern European cookies melt in your mouth.