Creme Patissiere

This pastry cream is a standard of patisserie cooking and can be used in many of the cakes that you can buy in your favourite pastry shops. If you don't want as much as this then scale the recipe down.

So to make it you will need:

400ml of whole milk
100ml of cream
150g egg yolk, this is approximately 7 yolks. It is best to measure as not all eggs are created equal.
150g sugar
36g cornflour
1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

1. Put the egg yolks and sugar into a bowl and mix lightly. 
2. Add the cornflour and whisk together fo a few seconds until evenly blended.
3. Now add the cold milk and cream and mix to combine the ingredients. 
4. Cook in the microwave for 2 minutes at high power. Open the microwave and mix well. This makes sure that the heat is evenly distributed.
5. Replace the cream into microwave and cook for a further minute. Remove and mix well. Do this twice more and by the time that you have cooked it for 5 minutes in total it should be cooked. If you are nervous, you can cook for 30 seconds at a time. You should mix every time that you open the oven. You will know that it is cooked when it is thick and it has lost the taste of raw cornflour.