Golden layered Boston Cream Pie with glossy chocolate glaze dripping down vanilla custard-filled sponge cake on white serving plate

Farmer's Boston Cream Pie

Name: Farmer's Boston Cream Pie
Total time: 70 min
Yield: 10
Cuisine: United States
Ingredients: For sponge: 200g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 200g sugar, 100g butter, 3 eggs, 150ml milk, 1 tsp vanilla; For custard: 400ml milk, 3 yolks, 80g sugar, 30g cornflour, 1 tsp vanilla; For glaze: 100g dark chocolate, 60ml cream, 15g butter

From Boston Cooking-School Cook Book · Fannie Merritt Farmer · 1896

Verified from original source

Two sponge layers, thick vanilla custard, chocolate glaze — actually a cake, called a pie for historical reasons.

History

Boston Cream Pie, despite its name, is a cake created at Boston's Parker House Hotel in 1856 by French chef Sanzian. Originally called "Parker House Chocolate Cream Pie," it consisted of two layers of sponge cake filled with custard and topped with chocolate glaze. The "pie" designation reflects 19th-century American baking conventions when cakes and pies were often baked in similar tins and the terms were used interchangeably. It became a New England staple and appeared in Fannie Farmer's 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, cementing its place in American home baking. Massachusetts designated it the official state dessert in 1996.

Sources

Farmer, Fannie Merritt. The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. 1896.
Shapiro, Laura. Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century. 1986.
Smith, Andrew F. The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. 2007.
Parker House Hotel archives, Boston, Massachusetts.
Mariani, John. The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink. 1999.

Serves

Prep

40m

Cook

30m

Difficulty

Medium

Ingredients

· For sponge: 200g plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 200g sugar, 100g butter, 3 eggs, 150ml milk, 1 tsp vanilla
· For custard: 400ml milk, 3 yolks, 80g sugar, 30g cornflour, 1 tsp vanilla
· For glaze: 100g dark chocolate, 60ml cream, 15g butter

Method

1
Make custard: whisk yolks, sugar, cornflour. Warm milk, temper in, cook 3 min until thick. Cool.
2
Bake sponge: cream butter+sugar, add eggs then dry+milk. Divide between two 20cm tins. Bake 175°C, 22 min. Cool.
3
Sandwich sponges with cold custard.
4
Warm cream, pour over chocolate; stir smooth. Whisk in butter.
5
Pour glaze over top and let it drip. Chill 20 min to set.

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