By the title and lead photo of this post, you can guess that Boston Cream Pie is no pie. But why call it a pie when it is clearly a cake?
Naturally, I went to my most trusted source, Markipedia. Being a native New Englander and a historian, I just assumed he would know. He did not. Disappointed? No, just shocked.
Wikipedia, however, had some good 411 for me. And it aligns with the little I knew from my mother. She always said her recipe was from the Parker House Hotel in Boston, a prime claimant for creation of both this cake and the eponymous Parker House Rolls.
Apparently, in the 19th century, pies and cakes were made in the same kind of baking tin and, thus, the terms cake and pie were sometimes interchangeable. Who knew?
Boston Cream Pie is also known by other names - chocolate cream pie, cream pie, and custard cake. To me, the latter makes the most sense...
This cake is unbelievably easy to make, and even the custard isn’t fussy at all. My mother – and Mark’s mother, for that matter – used to complain about making it, as it really is three distinct recipes: cake, custard, ganache.
