When: November 27
National Bavarian Cream Pie Day celebrates the silky, molded dessert cream that sits between a custard and a mousse — made by enriching pastry cream with whipped cream and gelatin, producing a cold dessert with the flavor of custard and the lightness of mousse.
Bavarian cream (Crème Bavaroise) was almost certainly not invented in Bavaria — it's a French preparation named for the popularity of Bavarian visiting aristocrats at Versailles in the 18th century.
Despite its name, Bavarian cream was invented in France by a Frenchman. Marie-Antoine Carême — the chef who codified classical French cuisine in the early 19th century, who cooked for Napoleon, the Prince Regent of England, Tsar Alexander I, and the Rothschilds, who is generally considered the founder of grande cuisine — named his stabilized frozen cream preparation "Bavarois" for the Bavarian nobility who were fashionable visitors at the French court. There is no documented Bavarian origin. The name was an association of prestige, not a description of geography. Carême attached a fashionable foreign name to a French preparation and it crossed the Atlantic still wearing it. The technique involves three components assembled in sequence: crème anglaise (egg yolks cooked with milk and sugar), gelatin dissolved into the hot custard, and whipped cream folded in as the custard cools. The gelatin provides enough structure to hold a molded shape; the whipped cream provides lightness; the...