Thursday night I tackled making pastry cream for the first time. If you recall from the recipe, I had to whisk my eggs in one bowl, whisk my milk-sugar mixture in a saucepan over heat, then temper the eggs with the aforementioned milk. Easy enough, but you have to pay attention and keep whisking the entire time so you don’t end up with sweet scrambled eggs.

The whisk I use is a piece of kitchen equipment I married in to. Ray had a Kitchenaid brand hand whisk when we met, and I’ve used it ever since I moved in with him, nearly 4 years ago. I enjoy whisking a lot of things by hand; I get an odd sense of pleasure as the wire loops hit the sides of my metal mixing bowl. Nothing is better than a little percussive whisking and dancing around the kitchen to the beat; it also means things end up being whipped just right. But, in this day and age of stand- and hand-mixers, hand whisking isn’t always ideal. But when it is … well, just trust me.

Anyway, when it comes to pastry creams and curds, you have to whisk your mixtures by hand, mainly because there’s a heat source involved. So, that’s what I was doing Thursday night in my steamy kitchen. And all was going well–once the milk-sugar was at the right temperature, I began pouring it in a thin steam into my egg mixture, whisking away. I was making plenty of noise with the whisk smacking the sides of the metal mixing bowl, keeping the eggs moving to avoid scrambling. And then it happened.

It sounded like a small explosion. Egg-milk mixture was flung across the kitchen. What the hell just happened?

The whisk broke. And startled the living daylights out of me.

One of the wire loops had snapped out from the handle. I had to quickly toss it into the sink and grabbed the nearest thing to me–one of the handmixer’s beaters. I finished tempering the eggs and got the mixture back onto the stove to thicken over the heat. And I continued whisking … with the beater, which at 6 inches long, is not long enough to protect your hand from a heat source. Needless to say, it sucked.

Now I am without a whisk, a kitchen tool that I really should have 2 or 3. I think I’d like to pick up some long handled whisks … the ones you see in professional kitchens. Or maybe a kind reader would like to send one to me? Because that would be the bees knees.

This post is sans photo because I didn’t have time to snap a picture while making my pastry cream. That, and Ray was a doll and cleaned up the broken whisk for me.

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