Successful ""crème anglaise"" custard cream

By Bruno Tenailleau.

To make the vanilla cream: boil ¾ litre of milk with a split and scraped vanilla pod (let the seeds and pod stew).
Beat 4 or 5 egg yolks with 180 g. of sugar, pour on the boiling milk while whisking and cook it ""à la nappe""*. Put it through a sieve and leave it to cool.

* Cooking ""à la nappe"" consists of cooking while stirring with the help of a spatula until the mixture coats the spatula.
Stir in figures of 8 to prevent the sides from burning. To check the cooking, draw a line with your finger on the spatula that has been dipped in the mixture. It the line remains visible, it is cooked. For the vanilla cream, work over a low flame. The mixture must never boil to avoid congealing the egg yolks that will come apart from the milk and turn the cream. Ideally, the temperature should be 85°C for the cream to take properly.

Two tips:

during the cooking, a thin froth will appear. When the froth disappears, your cream is almost done.

To recover cream that has become too hot and has begun to turn, take the saucepan off the heat and plunge the base into cold water while beating energetically with a whisk. Take the pan back to a very low flame. Filter the cream with a strainer when it is cooked.