Mousse
Listed as Vanilla Bavarian Cream in professional baking, Crème Anglaise is also known as vanilla custard sauce, a stirred custard. It consists of milk, sugar, and egg yolks stirred over very low heat until slightly thickened, then flavored with vanilla.
Pastry Shop Essential
Crème anglaise and pastry cream (or crème pâtissière) are fundamental products not only used on their own but as components or ingredients in a wide variety of pastries and desserts. These recipes and techniques will be used over and over again.
Crème anglaise as a Bavarian cream
Crème angalise includes preparations like Bavarian creams (special care should be taken because the eggs can curdle if overcooked). A Bavarian is made of three basic elements: custard sauce or crème anglaise (flavored as desired), gelatin, and whipped cream.
There’s a quiet kind of confidence that comes with custards.
Not the loud, fire-and-sizzle confidence of a sauté pan, or the adrenaline of calling tickets on a busy line—but something slower. More deliberate. Cooking with things like bavarian cream and crème anglaise feels less like commanding the kitchen and more like listening to it.
I remember the first time I stood over a pot of crème anglaise, wooden spoon in hand, gently stirring egg yolks, sugar, and cream over low heat. Nothing dramatic was happening. No flames, no aggressive bubbling—just the gradual thickening of something that could break if I rushed it or looked away too long. It taught patience in a way nothing else had. You don’t muscle a custard into existence. You coax it.
You learn to read it not by temperature alone, but by feel—the way it coats the back of a spoon, the way your finger draws a clean line through it. It’s intimate, almost.
Bavarian cream takes that same foundation and asks you to trust it even more. You start with that silky anglaise, then fold in gelatin and softly whipped cream, transforming something fluid into something that holds. It’s a quiet kind of alchemy. There’s a moment when it looks like it might not come together—when the textures feel incompatible, like they’re resisting each other—and then suddenly, they don’t. It becomes light, structured, elegant.
And then you wait.
That’s the other lesson. In a kitchen that often demands speed, desserts like these demand restraint. You pipe it, mold it, set it—and then you let time do its work. No shortcuts. No rushing the chill.
When it finally turns out onto a plate, smooth and delicate, maybe paired with fresh fruit or a glossy sauce, it almost feels like it came from somewhere else entirely. Something so refined, born from something so simple.
Cooking with custards teaches you control, yes—but more than that, it teaches you trust. Trust in the process, in your senses, in the quiet moments where nothing seems to be happening…until everything is.
And in those moments, you realize that not all great cooking is loud.
Some of it is just a whisper.
Ingredients
- .37 oz gelatin
- 5 fl. oz. water
- 4 oz egg yolks
- 4 oz. sugar (unless otherwise noted for flavoring)
- 16 oz. milk (unless otherwise noted for flavoring)
- .25 oz. vanilla extract
- 16 oz. heavy cream for cream chantilly
Step by Step
Method
- Soak gelatin in water.
- Prepare crème anglaise: whip egg yolks + sugar until thick and light. Scald milk and slowly stir into the egg yolk mixture beating constantly. Cook over hot water bath, stirring constantly until it thickens slightly. Temp should not exeed 180 degrees F.
- Remove from heat and stir in vanilla.
- Stir the gelatin mixture into the hot custard sauce until it is dissolved.
- Cool custard sauce in the refrigerator or over an ice bath, stirring occasionally to keep mixture smooth.
- Whip the cream until it forms soft peaks. Don't overwhip.
- When the custard is very thick but not yet set, fold in whipped cream.
- Pour mixture into molds and chill until set.
Variations
- Chocolate Bavarian Cream: Add 6 oz. semisweet chocolate, chopped or grated, to the hot custard sauce. Stir until completely melted and blended in.
- Strawberry/Raspberry Bavarian Cream: Reduce the milk to 8 oz. and the sugar to 3 oz. Mash 8 oz of fresh fruit (or 12 oz of frozen fruit) with 3 oz. of sugar separate from the recipe. Stir this purée into the custard sauce before adding the whipped cream.