Cake – How to thicken a sour cream-based pastry cream

My coconut cream pie recipe uses milk (2 cups, whole milk gives a creamier flavour), 6 eggs, 1 cup sugar, and 2 tablespoons of gelatin (and coconut of course). It doesn't go like jelly, it has more of a silky consistency.

You divide the milk thusly:

• 2/3 cup, sprinkled with the gelatin, whisked, and left to soften for 5 mins
• 1 1/3 cup to make the 'custard'

Once the custard is made (i.e. sugar whisked into egg yolks, hot milk poured in after tempering), simply whisk in the gelatinised milk. My recipe then calls for cream and the egg whites to be folded in (after cooling) to lighten the whole thing.

You have three options:

1. Prepare for drippage. If you're doing a lot of small items in particular, you set up a wire rack over a sheet pan, and just let it drip down. For the small items, you can dip into the glaze, then invert and place on the rack, like you would glaze a donut.

2. Add a barrier. Make a thicker icing that won't flow, and pipe right at the edge to give it a little bit of containment, then flood the top with the thinner icing. You'll need the cake nearly level for this to work well.

3. Pipe it on. You need an icing that's just thinned to the point where it will slump and flow back together, but not so thin it'll flow off. Use a piping bag (or plastic bag with the corner cut off) to make lines close enough together so the icing forms a solid covering. You may want to start at the outer edge and make a ring like #2, then work inward. This can work for more uneven cakes, as it doesn't need to be perfectly level, but it's more effort to get the consistency right.

Exact technique and consistency is going to depend on how thick (depth) you want the icing. It's always easier to thin it (doesn't take much added liquid) than to stiffen it back up.