The contradictory brilliance of Boston cream pie

They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but perhaps you can teach it old tricks. When I embarked on making a Boston cream pie, I thought I knew it all when it came to sponge cakes. I’d creamed butter and sugar, using elbow grease and a wooden spoon or employing the horsepower of a stand mixer’s whisk attachment. I’ve used the all-in-one-method; I’ve melted butter and folded it into cake batters in the pursuit of sticky denseness. And I’ve folded in egg whites, holding my breath in an attempt not to knock any air out of the mix.

But I had never made a Boston cream pie, and so I had never made a hot milk sponge. Could this old dog learn something new?

The first thing to say about Boston cream pie is that it is neither a pie and nor is it filled with cream.