Gravity wasn’t on my side this time. # 333: Bourbon Custard, aka An Attempt at Kremšnita

Having throwbacks to my first attempt at a charlotte royale where gravity decided to work double-time. Luckily, custard is just as delicious in a glass as it is in a slice of cake!

My friend Emily had a slice of kremšnita or Lake Bled cream cake on her recent Slovenia trip and gave it rave reviews, so of course we had to try and recreate it. It is essentially a free-standing custard sandwiched between thin layers of crispy puff pastry. Sound familiar? It’s closely related to an Australian vanilla slice, or a French mille-feuille / Napoleon (without the middle puff pastry layer).

Many hotels in the Lake Bled region claim to be the inventor of this yummy dessert, but the Sava Hoteli Bled wins for cutest marketing. They have a full birth certificate for the cream cake on their website:

“Year of Birth: 1953

Place of Birth: cake shop of Hotel Park at Bled

Father: Ištvan Lukačević

Mother: Vojvodina cream cake

Features: Layers from the bottom to the top are puff pastry, custard, whipped cream, puff pastry and icing sugar

Dimensions: 7 x 7 x 7cm

How to distinguish the original from the rest: When you place it on the plate, the entire cream cake must sway back and forth.”

I didn’t have dark rum on hand, so we happily pivoted to bourbon.

Never have I ever made a full cauldron of pastry cream. Glorious and terrifying in equal measure!

Reading through the recipe, it’s thiiiis close to a regular pastry cream. Instead of ignoring the egg whites, this cake whips them to stiff peaks and then has you slowly pour in the hot pastry cream mixture as it continues to whip in the mixer.

Holding my breath as we got within a half inch of the top of the bowl. The poor stand mixer didn’t know what hit her!

Off to chill while we bake up some puff pastry.

It feels counterintuitive, but we actually don’t want the puff pastry to puff up to new heights. We want all the yummy layers compacted into a thin crispy leaf. Literally bursting the pastry’s bubble.

Masquerading as a giant saltine.

Time for a trim.

Voila! Had to line the edges so the cooling custard wouldn’t leak out the slots.

Crossing our fingers skeptically as we put it down for it’s nap in the fridge.

Cream layer = check!

Noooooooo. Fixes for next time: cutting the recipe down by two-thirds to allow for more experimentation, cooking the pastry cream for longer to allow for a higher viscosity, and adding a lil bit of gelatin as an insurance policy.

Going with the flow (literally.)

Happy munching!

Recipe from https://www.slovenian-kitchen.com/blog-1/2022/03/20/bled-cream-cake-blejska-kremsnita