Vanilla Pastry Cream

Vanilla pastry cream is a very thick custard or pudding typically used as a filling for cream puffs or donuts, or used between layers for cakes, or used as the base for some pies and dessert tarts.* It is thickened by quite a lot of cornstarch and egg yolks (some use whole eggs). The amount below is good to fill a nine inch pie shell.  

Ingredients:

2 cups milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch
6 egg yolks (large eggs)
1 or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 tablespoons butter, softened 

Put the milk into a heavy bottomed pan over low heat. You don't want to boil the milk; just let it gradually heat up until it gives off steam. Meanwhile, whisk or beat together the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch, until the mixture is smooth and thick. I use an electric mixer on low speed, but you don't want the mixture all frothy, and using a whisk is fine. When the milk is steaming hot, but not boiling, remove the milk from the heat and gradually add about half of the milk to the egg mixture, WHILE WHISKING CONSTANTLY; otherwise, the eggs will curdle and you'll have scrambled eggs. Don't be afraid to temporarily stop, adding milk so as to prevent curdling, but keep whisking even if you've stopped adding milk. After about half of the milk is mixed into the eggs, and it is smooth, put the pan with the remaining milk back onto low heat. Now gradually add the egg/milk mixture to the milk, whisking constantly. The mixture will begin to thicken more and more as the temperature rises. Turn the heat to very low and continue to whisk to prevent sticking and scorching. When the mixture is very thick, remove it from the heat, add the vanilla and 1 tablespoon of the butter, whisking to incorporate these ingredients into the vanilla cream, then add the second tablespoon of butter and whisk it in. Cover the vanilla cream with plastic wrap (usually called "cling film" in the UK) by literally putting the plastic wrap right on top of the cream; this will prevent a "skin" from forming on top. Most often vanilla cream is chilled for a few hours before use.

 * For a fruit tart, here is the link: https://pontificating-randy.blogspot.com/2019/09/fruit-tart.html

Vanilla pastry cream base in a pie shell ...  

WORD HISTORY:
Clear-This word is distantly related to "claim," a word of Latin derivation borrowed by English from French. It goes back to Indo European "keleh/kelh," which had the notion, "shout, to call out." This gave its Latin offspring the adjective "clarus," which meant, "clear/understood (of sounds)," and broadened into, "bright, clear (of sights), famous, glorious (of people or places 'that stand out clearly')." This passed to Latin-based Old French as "cler," meaning, "bright, easily seen." Carried to England by the Normans, English borrowed the word in about 1300 with the same general meanings as the French and Latin words, as well as figurative senses (as in "clear title or deed;" "not obstructed by conditions or claims by others"). The verb developed from the adjective in the middle of the 1300s. The noun form also developed in the first half of the 1300s, meaning, "open patch of forest." "Clear" has various forms in many of the Germanic cousins of English: German "klar," Low German "kloor," Dutch "klaar" ("klaren" as verb), Danish, Norwegian and Swedish have "klar."