Don’t forget to go through the baking tips first, CHECK IT NOW!
This is sheer elegance. If you’re using ready made puff pastry sheets (which I usually do), mille-feuille is not that hard to make. But you will impress your family and friends because it has that look of elegant French desserts and tastes amazing with flaky puff pastry and creamy filling. You just have to follow the directions precisely and I’m sure you will get wonderfully tasty mille-feuille.
Prep time: 30 mins – Cook time: 18 mins – Assembly time: 30 mins – Total time: 1 hour 20 mins
Ingredients:
- 1 package puff pastry sheets
- Powdered sugar
- Pastry cutter or sharp knife or pizza cutter
Pastry Cream
- 2 cups milk
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 4 egg yolks
- 1/4 cup sugar (or slightly less if you want to cut down on the sweetness)
- 1/4 cup cornstarch
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons butter
Equipment:
| Measuring cups and spoons |
| 2 baking trays |
| Rolling pin |
| Electric handheld whisk |
| Hand whisk |
| Medium pot |
| Medium bowl |
| Sieve |
| Plastic wrap |
| Piping bag with a round tip |
How to…..
Preheat the oven to 420 Fahrenheit/215 Celsius. Prepare a baking tray with parchment paper.
I used ready puff pastry and rolled it out very thin (about 1/8 of an inch) on a floured surface. I then cut it into 3 inch * 4 inch/7.5 cm * 10 cm rectangles.
I placed the rectangles onto the baking tray (don’t forget the parchment paper!!). After placing all the rectangle pastries, I placed parchment paper on top of them and placed a baking tray on top. This way the puff pastry will rise just enough and not too much. Bake them for about 8 minutes.
(Ps- My oven can be hotter than I like – so I burned the first batch and then the second time around it worked!)
Vanilla Pastry Cream:
Put the milk and vanilla in a pot and heat over medium heat. Heat it just to the point of boiling. Remove from the stove-top and set aside.
Mix the sugar, salt and corn starch in a medium bowl. Add the egg yolks, and whisk them until well combined and fluffy. Add a third of the milk mixture and whisk it well until combined. Then add the remaining milk mixture and whisk to combine.
Pour the mixture back into the pot, and continue whisking it over medium-heat. It will start to come together and thicken. Keep whisking it until it thickens. It will have started to boil while you’re whisking. Remove it from the heat. Add the butter and mix it in well until it melts and is well combined.
If the pastry cream is not smooth, you can strain it through a sieve into a bowl.
Let it cool for a few minutes, and then cover it with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge to cool completely. Make sure you press the plastic wrap down onto the surface of the cream so it doesn’t form a skin layer on top.
Assembly:
I made sure the pastry cream was cold from the fridge before I pipe it, so it would pipe well. Put the pastry cream in the piping bag. I placed one rectangle on the serving dish and piped six dollops of cream. Placed the next rectangle on top of it, and piped six dollops of cream. Then I placed the third rectangle and sprinkled powdered sugar on top
I cut out strips of parchment paper and put them on the top pastry sheet and sprinkled sugar to get the stripes look. You can play with the decorations and do different shapes…..or just sprinkle it completely with powdered sugar, or cocoa…whatever you desire!