The Bostini

This weekend’s choice with the heavenly cake bakers was The Bostini. This cake is supposed to be a deconstruction of a boston cream pie. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually had Boston Cream Pie, but I have had Boston Cream doughnuts from Tim Hortons. I can say with certainty that this is nothing like those, and I can’t say that’s a bad thing. Heck, their chocolate glaze doesn’t even taste like it has any chocolate in it.

I’m not sure if Tim Horton’s is doing something wrong (quite likely), but the Boston Cream doughnuts I’ve had haven’t had a hint of orange in them. Rose’s take on the Boston Cream pie is a good dose of pastry cream, topped with an orange chiffon cupcake, covered in a buttery chocolate glaze. The recipe is supposed to be served in 8 fancy cappuccino cups, but the closest thing I had was 4 sundae glasses, so I reduced the recipe accordingly. I did half the cupcakes (but still managed to get 9, instead of 6), half the pastry cream (which somehow came out to 2 cups worth, even though the full recipe says 3 1/2 cups), and less than half the chocolate butter glaze.

I started the recipe by making the cream, since it needed to cool down and chill in the fridge the longest. You split a vanilla bean, scrape out the seeds, and rub them into the sugar. I once tried doing something with vanilla seeds without rubbing them into the sugar before mixing the flour in, and I’ll tell you right now — don’t try that at home. The seeds mix easily with sugar, but with flour in the mix, they turn gummy and globby. Ick. I had a brand-new batch of Tahitian vanilla beans from the Vanilla Food Company, and was happy to get an opportunity to try them out.

The rest of the pastry cream comes together by mixing milk, cornstarch and eggs, then scalding some cream with the vanilla sugar. Mix a bit of the hot cream into the egg mixture, then add the tempered egg mixture back into the hot cream and cook until thickened. Voilà! Pastry cream.

Pour that into your serving vessels of choice, cover directly on the surface of the cream with plastic wrap, and cool to room temperature then stash in the fridge.

Next step — orange chiffon cupcakes. I realized just now that I have no pictures of this process — that’s how quickly they came together. You’ve got an egg yolk mixture, with freshly squeezed orange juice and zest, with some cake flour and sugar. On the other side, a stiff meringue. Fold the meringue into the yolky orangey stuff, and pour into cupcake pans. I somehow managed to get 9 cupcakes from a half recipe, and I think if I hadn’t overfilled them, I would have managed 12. You have company, Julie!

I decided to serve my cupcakes right-side up, because of the shape of my sundae glasses. So, I stuck the cupcakes on top of about 1/2 a cup of pastry cream. The chocolate butter glaze is equal parts by weight of — you guessed it — chocolate and butter. I happened to have about 80 grams of a stick of butter opened, so I just used that amount of chocolate to make the glaze.

Here, again, is what that all looks like when put together. Isn’t that glaze lovely?

I think I’m going to be making more of this chocolate butter glaze. It melts in your mouth just like that magic shell ice cream topping, and it’s super easy to make. I can’t imagine it’s good for you, but I bet magic shell isn’t either. The whole dessert works really well together (and it’s way better than a Tim Horton’s Boston Cream doughnut). It’s pretty easy, too, so I’ll probably make it again, eventually. I’m just having so much fun making something new every week that I don’t know when I’ll get around to repeating things. 😉