Cooking Adventure With Cream Cake

The dual canonization of Pope John Paul II and Pope John the XXII on Sunday by Pope Francis was witnessed by huge crowds of people in St. Peter square in Vatican City, and via cable television. Just to be clear while this historic moment was being televised at 3:00 am central time, I was sound asleep.

The Polish community is pleased and proud of our newly name saint, Saint Pope John Paul II. To celebrate John Paul's canonization, I decided to try and bake his favorite sweet treat, kremowka papieska, pronounced, kreh-MOOV-kah pah-PYESS-kah or Polish Papal Cream Cake. This favorite dessert of John Paul II is similar to a napoleon tart.

I found the Polish Papal Cream Cake Recipe - Kremowka Papieska online, asked my friend Lydia if she would like to help me, which really means make it while I watch. Being such a wonderful baker and an awesome friend she agreed, so yesterday late morning I arrived at her house to attempt to make this recipe. For the recipe, we used click here.

We did not make our own puff pastry, but rather purchased frozen from the grocery store, don't judge.

After rolling out the fold marks and scoring the puff pastry into 9 even squares, we baked the pastry in the oven until golden brown.

While the pastry was puffy and golden brown it also came out with marks from the rack, oops.

Everything was poured into a sauce pan that was needed to make the custard.

Using a wire whisk to blend the ingredients until it came to a boil, I then switched to a wooden spoon as I lowered the heat and continued to cook for an additional minute.

Into an ice bath to stop the cooking process and cool off the custard.

Spread the custard filling evenly across the bottom layer of the puff pastry. Next time we would double the custard recipe.

Added the top layer of the pastry and dusted the cream cake with powdered sugar.

Time for a taste test, we called Lydia's husband to be our official taste tester.

If you put food on a pretty plate will it taste better? He liked it, he gave us an 8 out of 10.

I'm not a huge fan of custard, but I did taste a small piece, not bad for our first attempt.

Here is our experience using this recipe while making cream cake for the first time ...

1. The recipe says prep time is 30 minutes, and cook time is 30 minutes. In reality, it took us from ll:00 am until 2:00pm to finish making this recipe.
2. While I was reading the recipe, which was written in English, I could pronounce and read all of the words, but often had no idea what we were supposed to do.
3. The internet and youtube explained to us how to bake the puff pastry. I guess we are visual learners.
4.  Cooking with your friend is a lot of fun.
5. After making a recipe for the first time, you know it will be much easier the next time because you now understand what should be done and how.

It wasn't perfect, but it was eatable and pretty darn good! Smacznego!