Boston Cream Pie

All I have to do is say it's my mom's recipe: you know it's delicious.

Boston Cream Pie is festive but it's not hard to make. It's Mom's sponge cake, split & filled with vanilla cream, then topped with chocolate glaze. The heart pan made it special; I made it Wednesday for a little girl we love.

Mom's Sponge Cake

1 C. sifted flour

1 tsp. baking powder

dash salt

1/2 C. milk

1 T. butter

2 eggs

1 C. sugar

1. Sift dry ingredients together.
2. Scald milk with the butter. Let butter melt. (I use a glass measuring cup & put it in the microwave until little bubbles form on the sides, but it doesn't boil. Takes less than a minute.)
3. Beat the eggs a lot, until they lose that eggy look & become light.
4. Gradually beat in the sugar.
5. Then add the dry ingredients. Stir until just mixed.
6. Add hot milk with butter & vanilla.
7. Pour into buttered & floured 9" cake pan (I used a heart-shaped pan.) Mom often used a skillet (an 8" iron skillet or a frying pan that is about that size. Mine is 7 1/2" at the base and 10 1/2" at the top.) Bake 30 min. at 350°.
8. Cool & then remove cake from the pan. (Don't use a skillet if you plan to remove the cake from the pan.),
9. For Boston Cream Pie split the cooled cake carefully with a long serrated knife & spread bottom layer with cream. Put second layer on top of the cream. Decorate with powdered sugar or a thin chocolate glaze.

*Other Sponge Cake options from Mom:

• Pierce the top (a lot) with fork tines as soon as the cake comes out of the oven & immediately pour lemon syrup (made with equal parts lemon juice & sugar, maybe a half cup of each, that you boil until the sugar melts) over it so it seeps into the cake.
• Lightly sprinkle sugar on the buttered pan, top with two peeled & thinly sliced pears or apples, & pour the cake batter on top.
• In a skillet, melt a little butter, add enough brown sugar to cover the bottom of the pan, & melt it. Then add fruit such as pineapple (fresh is best). Pour the cake batter on top for Upside-down Cake.

Mom's Cream Filling

Mix together in saucepan:

• 2 tbl. flour
• 2 tbl cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 C. sugar
• lump of butter
• 1 tsp. vanilla

1. Add 2 C. milk. Cook over moderate heat until thick, stirring all the while or it will burn.
2. Remove from stove.
3. Add 1 egg, this way: Crack the egg into a little bowl & beat it. Then take a teaspoon or so of the still-hot cream & beat it into the egg. Then the egg is kind of prepared for the heat & is less likely to curdle. Mix the egg into the pudding. Stir in quickly & well. This is the trickiest step of making a pudding. If you don't do it right, the egg will start to turn to scrambled eggs. Don't worry – it's not hard to do it right, but it does take patience.
4. Put the mixture back onto the stove & cook 3 minutes longer, stirring all the while.
5. Remove from the heat & stir in the lump of butter & vanilla.
6. Cool.

*You can make chocolate cream by adding cocoa to the sugar mixture, or by stirring in good chocolate at the last step. If you use brown sugar you've got butterscotch pudding. I've never combined the two, but doesn't that sound good?

Chocolate Glaze

It's trial & error here: I mix some confectioner's sugar with some cocoa & add some water, a little at a time. Then I beat the lumps out.

You could also melt bittersweet chocolate with a lump of butter.