Chiboust cream recipe

The chiboust cream owes its name to the surname of the creator of the Saint Honoré cake and is the cream that this cake originally carries. It is a type of pastry cream widely used in French pastries and very easy to make. It is a mixture of pastry cream and Italian meringue, making the result a very airy and fluffy cream.

It combines perfectly with fresh fruits, as a filling for biscuits, profiteroles, tartlets… It is a delight that you should not miss. In this article we share all the tricks so you can discover how to make chiboust cream and have a result worthy of haute confectionery.

Ingredients to make Chiboust Cream:

For the pastry cream:

2 sheets of gelatin
1 vanilla pod
250 milliliters of milk

4 egg yolks
75 grams of sugar
25 grams of cornstarch

For the Italian meringue:
50 milliliters of water
125 grams of sugar

4 egg whites
1 pinch of salt

How to make chiboust cream:

To make the chiboust cream, we start by preparing the pastry cream so that it is warm when using it. To do this, we are going to put the two sheets of gelatin to hydrate in water.

Cut the vanilla pod in half (we are only going to use half) and make a cut in the center. With a knife, we scrape the vanilla seeds and put it next to the milk in a pot. Bring it to a boil and remove it from the heat.
While the milk is heating up, we put the yolks in a bowl along with the sugar and cornstarch. Beat with a whisk until creamy and whitish.
Remove the half vanilla pod from the hot milk, take a scoop and add it to the mixture of yolks, sugar and cornstarch, beating non-stop so that the yolks do not curdle.

We continue adding hot milk and beating until we have incorporated it all.
Pour the mixture back into the pot and put it back on the heat to continue making the chiboust cream.
Stir continuously until thickened and, at this point, remove the pot from the heat.

When the pastry cream is ready, drain the gelatin sheets and add them while we continue beating so that the gelatin is well integrated. We can replace the gelatin with agar-agar.
We transfer the cream to another container so that it cools down sooner and cover it with plastic wrap touching the cream so that a dark film does not form on the surface. Let it warm to room temperature.
While the pastry cream loses heat, we begin to prepare the Italian meringue.

To do this, we put the water with the sugar in a pot and cook it over medium heat until it reaches 121 ºC.
If you don’t have a sugar thermometer, nothing happens, it can be calculated. For example, on my ceramic hob, which goes from 1 to 9, I put it all the time on number 5 and I had it cooking for about 20 minutes.
You’ll know it’s ready when it forms the so-called “ball point”.

To check exactly, we fill a small glass with a little water, take out a little syrup with a dessert spoon and add it to the water.
Then we put our fingers, we take the syrup out of the water and we form with it a little ball of sugar that is not very hard so as not to go to the point of “hard ball point”.
While the syrup cooks until it reaches 121 ºC, we prepare the meringue. To do this, we put the egg whites in a large bowl with a pinch of salt and mount the whites very firm.

When the syrup is ready to the “ball point”, we increase the speed of our mixer and we add the syrup in the form of a thread while we continue beating.
If we have already poured all our syrup but we touch the bowl of whites and we notice it hot, we will continue beating until it has cooled or is a little lukewarm.
Tip: When we pour the syrup into the whipped egg whites, it is very important to try to do it on one side but without touching the walls of the glass where we are whipping the meringue.

To continue with the chiboust cream recipe, we return to the pastry cream, remove the plastic wrap that covered it and stir well with a few rods to make it looser.
At this point, we can add a little liquor, coffee or some flavor that we want to give to our cream. I have chosen to leave it as it is, but the lemon chiboust cream, for example, is also delicious.
Finally, we are gradually adding the pastry cream to the Italian meringue, while we are integrating well with a spatula or with some rods.

We will have a very airy and fluffy cream
We reserve it in the fridge so that it takes on a bit of body or we put it in a pastry bag so that it can cool down inside it.
That will depend on the use we want to give it.

If you have chosen to use the homemade chiboust creamas a filling and you have leftovers, you can always eat it alone, in small glasses, mixed with fruit or with chocolate, it is very tasty. In this case, we have put chocolate on it.