— Cathy Chapman

For those of you who are chefs here who know about the mother sauces, I think of these are classic creams that are used somewhat differently, but they're a part of a family. If you look in books, cookbooks, I have Larousse and "Professional Baking," and those books are in the book list for the course, and as is this one, "How Baking Works." You really need to familiarize yourself with these creams. We can't even talk about veganizing them if you don't know what they are. Right? I know I've been vegan for, must be getting on 35, 40 years at this point, but I know that I can remember, or I have to make something traditionally before I can convert it. And that's going to be the same for you, because a creme anglaise, for example, is a very light cream. I used to poach oeufs a la neige, which were meringues, in creme anglaise, and I remember, this was in pastry school. I went to traditional pastry school a long time ago, and I remember how carefully the heat had to be watched, and because you're adding eggs, and you didn't want the eggs to scramble in this beautiful cream. And then I would just wait for a... Honestly, just wait for one little whiff of, I would see a whiff of smoke coming, and take it right off and know that that was then it was correct. So I will tell you that creme patisserie, which you will hear on "The Great British Baking Show" referred to as creme pat, is a thick pastry cream. Creme diplomat is the same pastry cream with whipped cream typically folded into it. And sometimes it is stabilized with a little bit of gelatin. We would use agar. Then we have creme Saint Honore, which is pastry cream with Italian meringue folded into it. Now, we can do a version of that, but you need to understand, and you need to have an understanding of our vegan ingredients, what's available, and have the skills to do it. So in the course, we have a vanilla, what I call vanilla pastry cream or custard. It looks like this, and it is actually cashew-based, cashew and coconut milk with vanilla. Little bit of agar to keep it tight. If I want it as a pouring cream, I leave the agar out. Originally, the recipe called for guar gum and agar, and one of my students pointed out that using gums today can be problematic for a lot of people. So I just increased the agar, and you're actually waiting in your high-speed blender, I have a Vitamix, you're watching until this cream actually boils. And how do I know it boils? You see the smoke coming out of the top of the Vitamix, which I have to say, the brilliant photographers, videographers who recorded this course show that in the video. So that's a really cool thing. But you can do a pastry cream vegan version with a rich plant milk. Honestly, the richest plant milk there is, is soy milk, but for people who are allergic to soy, you can use a full-fat oat milk, for example. Rice milk, almond milk aren't going to have enough protein and fat to do this successfully. Some sugar, starch slurry, and that would be ideally a corn starch slurry added in. If you use arrowroot, it's going to get slimy because it has to cook. That's not the word they use. Slimy, okay. And then some vegan butter and a flavoring like vanilla, if that's where you're going. And then you would have the basis of a creme pat. And then to make the diplomat, you would fold in ... the whipped plant cream, and to make the honore, you would fold in the aquafaba Italian meringue. Some people lighten it further with whipped cream, but Italian meringue using aquafaba is definitely doable. So, that's what I want to say to you about that. And here I would use aquafaba instead of potato protein. Definitely. So, I hope that helps. I hope you really enjoy The Great British Baking Show. It's really cool. There have been many, many seasons, and I remember one or two where an episode was a vegan challenge, and I remember yelling at the screen because some people had no clue, and they were doing a lot of things wrong, which is to say that you have to have a foundation, which is why I love this course so much, and I'm so proud of the course and my students and graduates because you get this foundation and then you can go off and do other things.