Imagine the rich, lusciousness of classic pastry cream combined with the airy lightness of freshly whipped cream. That’s the magic of Crème Diplomate! This elegant, versatile, and utterly delightful cream is a true staple in the world of French patisserie, offering a delicate balance of flavor and texture that elevates everything from fruit tarts and cream puffs to layered cakes.
While it might sound fancy, Crème Diplomate is surprisingly approachable once you understand the simple science of combining its two core components. The stability of pastry cream meets the ethereal quality of whipped cream, resulting in a filling that’s both decadently smooth and wonderfully light.
In this post, we’ll guide you through each step to create the perfect Crème Diplomate, ensuring a stable, pipeable, and irresistibly delicious cream every time. Get ready to add this essential technique to your baking repertoire!
How and Where To Use Crème Diplomate!
- Crème Diplomate is a ideal filling for profiteroles (cream puffs), eclairs and doughnuts
- It’s the perfect base for a fruit tart, topped with strawberries or mixed berries/fruits
- Ideal between layers of puff pastry to make a gorgeous mille-feuille
Ingredients
- Crème Pâtissière – For the recipe click here
- Whipping Cream – You want a cream that is around 35% Fat, in the UK and other parts of the world we commonly have double cream. Double cream has a really high fat content (around 48-50% fat), you can still make a chantilly with this but it thickens really fast and sets really dense. Whipping cream is available in most supermarkets. In the US heavy whipping cream is around 40% which will work just fine as the creams there are ultra-pasteurised the creams behave slightly different and produce lovely smooth whipped creams
All The Equipment You Need To Make Crème Diplomate
- Mixing Bowl
- Digital scale
- Silicon Spatula
- Hand Whisk or Electric Whisk
How To Store Crème Diplomate
Crème Diplomate will store in the fridge for up to 3 days, however I advice against that. Once it sets it requires whipping to make it work able again, whipping it again will cause it the cream to thicken too much and change the texture. For best practice keep crème pâtissière in the fridge and make crème diplomate as and when you need it.
Crème Diplomate
Ingredients
Equipment
Method
- Place crème pâtissière into a mixing bowl and whisk until smooth and lump free.
- Whisk whipping cream and whisk until medium peaks.1
- Take a ¼ of the whipped cream and with a spatula mix into pastry cream.2
- With the remaining whipped cream take a ⅓ at a time and gently fold into the pastry cream until fully incorporated.
- Place your crème diplomate into a piping bag with a nozzle and fill you favourite choux pastry or layer between sponge.
Notes
- Pick up the cream with the end of a whisk, the cream should hold firmly to the whisk with a peak. The tip of the peak should droop over.
- This is called a 'Sacrifice' the aim here is to loosen up the pastry cream so when you fold in the remaining whipped cream it is easier to fold in with loosing all the air.