Recipe: Mille-feuille (Cream Napoleon)

You can’t go more classical than this! The mille-feuille is a traditional French pastry that can be found in any bakery in France.

What is the mille-feuille and how is it decorated?

The mille-feuille is made of three layers of puff pastry and two layers of pastry cream.

The top layer is usually coated with a sprinkle of powdered sugar or glazed with fondant.

If glazed, the classical decoration is made with white fondant and melted chocolate strips combed in alternate directions. Working with fondant needs some practice as it dries quickly and requires speed to complete the decoration so have everything ready on your work area before glazing the cake (i.e. spatula, melted chocolate inside the parchment paper piping cone,…).

Mathematical demonstration that the mille-feuille does not contain a thousand layers (but almost!)

The French name “mille-feuille” (“a thousand leaves“) refers to the number of layers in the dough.

For this dessert, puff pastry is folded 6 times, and each fold increases the number of layers exponentially. In case you ever wondered how many actual layers there are in a mille-feuille, here is the answer:

So now we have the proof that pastry chefs cheat! 🙂 Joking of course: there are not 1.000 layers… but almost: if properly prepared, a puff pastry with 729 layers that rise independently while baking results in an excellent, flaky and crispy product.

What is the story of the mille-feuille?

The origin of the mille-feuille is unknown: some sources refer to François Pierre De La Varenne‘s 1651 invention, later improved by the legendary Marie-Antoine Carême, and some others mention the Italian city of Naples as birthplace of this dessert.The “Neapolitan” adjective was later mangled into “Napoleon“, a name that became widespread in the 1800’s with the Napoleonic wars.
For this reason, the mille-feuille is also known as Napoleon in many countries.

Mille-feuille (Napoleon)

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Ingredients

Cake layers

200g	Puff pastry
	Powdered sugar (as needed)

Pastry cream

600ml	Milk
1/2 pinch	Salt
1/2	Vanilla bean
3	Eggs
60g	Cornstarch
150g	Granulated sugar
100	Glucose (or 130g more of granulated sugar)

Glaze

300g	Fondant
50g	Dark chocolate (chopped)

Directions

1

Roll out the puff pastry to a rectangle about the size of your pan and prick it with a fork

2

Bake for 15 minutes at 200°C, then remove from the oven and cover with parchment paper

3

Place a pan of the same size on the puff pastry covered with parchment paper. The second pan should prevent the puff pastry from rising too much, but it should not be too heavy. You can use the oven grill as well. Bake again for 30 minutes.

4

Remove from the oven and set the oven temperature to 260°C with the grill mode on. Remove the second pan and the parchment paper and then sprinkle the puff pastry with powdered sugar.

5

Bake for 5 more minutes (keep an eye on the puff pastry as it might burn very easily). As soon as you take the pan out of the oven, cut the puff pastry rectangle in 3 equal bands (the smaller side of the rectangle should become the long side of the bands).

6

While the puff pastry is in the oven, you can prepare the pastry cream: start by heating the milk with half of the sugar and the vanilla bean in a saucepan

7

In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, sugar and corn starch

8

When the milk is boiling, pour it in three times over the egg mixture and mix every time to prevent the yolks from curdling

9

Put back the liquid mixture into the saucepan and cook on medium heat whisking continuously

10

Allow the pastry cream to boil for 2 minutes then remove from the heat. Pour the cream on a pan covered with plastic wrap, cover with more plastic wrap and chill.

11

When the cream is chilled and the puff pastry bands have cooled down, whip quickly the pastry cream and fill a piping bag fitted with a big plain tip

12

Pipe stripes of pastry cream all along the first band of puff pastry (flat side on the bottom)

13

Place the second band of puff pastry on top and then pipe again stripes of cream on it

14

Finally add the third and last band of puff pastry (flat side on top) and chill the millefeuille. In the meantime melt the chocolate and have it ready in a parchment paper piping cone.

15

Now heat the fondant with half a spoon of water on a bain marie. The fondant should be quite runny, but do not overheat it (the ideal temperature is 35-37°C).

16

Pour the fondant on the top of the millefeuille

17

Quickly spread it with a long spatula all along the top layer of the puff pastry. Be careful as the fondant dries quickly (it also means that passing the spatula multiple times on the same spot might leave marks)

18

Cut the tip of the piping cone and quickly draw multiple chocolate lines on the fondant before it dries completely. You can aim for perfection, but even if the lines are not perfectly straight, don't worry too much, (almost) nobody will notice!

19

With the back of the tip of a knife, make some evenly-spaced perpendicular lines

20

Halfway between the marks created in the previous step, make some more marks moving the knife in the opposite direction

21

Chill the millefeuille for at least a couple of hours (or freeze it for 20-30 minutes), then refine its edges by cutting a few millimetres per side with a serrated knife to make them straight.

22

Finally cut the millefeuille (only if it is cold and firm) in equal portions with a serrated knife

Note

The mille-feuille can be made also with scraps of puff pastry, since the dough doesn't need a significant rise.

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