The Boston Cream Pie

Yesterday was Mothers' Day, which in my house is kind of a big deal.  It's not that we're typically big on the Hallmark holidays, but my grandmother's birthday is May 9th, my sister-in-law's is May 11th and my mother's is May 12, so it all folds into being a rather celebratory time of year.   I'm pretty sure I've posted about this before.  In 2008 I threw a brunch at my house featuring chocolate cups filled with strawberries and mint and a coconut cake with meringue frosting.  Last year was my grandmother's 90th birthday, so I made a special cake for that. 

This year we did the whole thing again.  A few weeks ago I learned that Boston Cream Pie is my grandmother's favorite dessert.  I figured that being that she was turning 91 on Mother's Day, so was pretty much entitled to whatever she wanted and if Boston Cream Pie was her favorite, that's what she'd get. 

I ran out of time because I went to a freezing cold, rainy, crappy loss of a game at Fenway that didn't start until 3 when I thought it was supposed to start at 1, so my father, very kindly, made the cake for me.  He made two layers of yellow cake in a heart-shaped pan.  The shape grew on me.  I had planned on hanging out with my cousin, who was in town for the birthdays, that night, so we went to my mom's and she helped me with the rest.  We also ate an interesting schmorgesborg of dinner that included salad, a turkey sandwich, two kinds of sushi, mozzarella-tomato salad, half-sour pickles and muffins.  We might not do that again. 

I made the pastry cream from the recipe in the Joy of Cooking.  I can't find it online, but it was on page 996, and I think a pretty standard pastry cream recipe.  It came together far more easily than I expected it to.  I also made the ganache from the Joy of Cooking recipe, which caused me to make the ganache again, from this website.  It worked a lot better the second time.  For some reason the first batch just didn't get thick enough.  Between the two ganaches and giving time to let the pastry cream cool and chill, it was a long night, but we interspersed it with reruns of The Golden Girls. 

Eventually, it all came together nicely and was raved about the next day. 

Next year: three layers, two yellow, one chocolate, filled with vanilla and chocolate pastry cream.