After showing you how to make your own puff pastry, today I will show you one of the hundreds of recipes that you can make with it: Mille-feuille, also known as Vanilla slice or Napoleon. This is a classic French recipe, that is known all over the world and has been adapted many times over. The recipe I will share with you is the traditional French recipe for it, with the only difference that I made individual mille-feuilles. The reason is simple: they are so much easier to serve (and eat), as it can be tricky to neatly slice a big Mille-feuille. This is a very easy and classy dessert with a wow factor. If you are in a pinch, you can use store bought puff pastry and it won’t take much time at all to put together. It is such an elegant and delicate dessert, perfect to impress your guests at your next tea party! Enjoy!
Mille-Feuille
The recipe for a classic French dessert made with home-made puff pastry: Mille-Feuille.
Ingredients
Pastry
- 12 10 x4 cm – 4x1.5 inch 3 mm – 0.1 inch thick puff pastry rectangles, thawed
- Icing sugar
Filling
- Crème pâtissière – make ½ dose of my recipe and chill it
Fondant Icing & Decoration
- 1 egg white
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 175 gms – 6 oz. icing sugar
- 2 tbsp dark chocolate melted
Instructions
Pastry
-
Prick the rectangles of puff pastry with a fork so that they do not puff up while baking.
-
Place them on a baking tray covered with baking paper and cover them with a silicone mat (or another sheet of baking paper and a heavy baking tray). This will prevent them from puffing up too much.
-
Bake them in a preheated oven at 200°C – 400°F for 15 minutes, then remove the top tray and baking paper, sprinkle them with icing sugar and put them back in the oven (uncovered) to brown and caramelize for another 5 to 10 minutes. Keep an eye on them at this stage as the sugar can burn.
-
Filling
-
Once the pastry has cooled, you can assemble your mille-feuille.
-
Put the crème pâtissière in a piping bag filled with a big round nozzle (or cut a hole in a reusable bag and use it without a nozzle).
-
-
Top them with another 4 rectangles. Press down lightly with your hands to ensure that they stick to the filling.
-
Make another layer by piping enough crème pâtissière to cover the 4 puffy pastry rectangles and top them with the last 4 rectangles. Press down lightly with your hands to ensure that they stick to the filling.
-
Put them in the fridge and prepare the icing.
Fondant Icing & Decoration
-
Melt the chocolate and transfer it to a piping bag (or plastic bag with the end snipped), fitted with a small round nozzle. Keep it in a glass or other tall container.
-
To make the icing, whisk the egg white, the lemon juice and icing sugar with an electric mixer until smooth. The mixture should be thick enough to leave trails on the surface. If it’s too thin, whisk in a bit more icing sugar.
-
Once ready, take the pastries out of the fridge, immediately pour the icing over the top of the mille-feuille and spread evenly (or remove the top puff pastries and dip them in it).
-
Still working quickly, pipe thin chocolate lines along the width of your pastry sheet (see below).
-
Now take a toothpick or a sharp knife and lightly draw it down (from top to bottom) through the rows of chocolate.
-
Chill for a couple of hours to give the icing the time to set and for all the flavours to combine.
-
Serve cold or at room temperature.
Recipe Notes
The above dose of icing makes more than what you need. You can use it to glaze sugar cookies.
The mille-feuilles can be made up to a day in advance, after which they will become less crisp.
Outstanding, Manu!
I’ve purchased Mille-Feuille countless times from bakeries but never been game enough to try it at home. Your recipes have never let me down so I can’t wait to give this one a go!
very impressive!
Talk about wow factor… WOW!!!!
Hi Manu,
Making this recipe as we speak. My girlfriends absolute favorite treat, I’m making them for her, I think she’ll love the Crème Pâtissière compared to a regular custard as shown in many recipes online.
I’ll let you know how it goes and post an album to the comments.
Sam
Hi Sam! What a lovely idea!! I really hope she’ll like them! Do let me know! 🙂
Hi,
Would it be good to use a Creme legere instead of a Creme patissiere? Which do you prefer?
Oh wow. Still waiting for this puff pastry. In 40 minutes I can do my last folding, flattening and final rest.
THEN I can get started.
If you happen to be at a computer at the moment Manu, how many grams of puff pastry makes 12 rectangles for when I cut it?
Hi Manu,
Starting construction now, if I had followed the Puff Pastry recipe 100% (which I think I did). How and which direction should I be cutting the Pastry to take full advantage of the puffs. Should I be rolling it to the 10 x 4 x 3mm so the layers are all squished more, or should I be cutting it across ways so the rectangle has a cross section of every layer.
Thanks,
Hi Sam! Sorry I just saw your messages, hope I am still in time. You can do it either way, whatever is more convenient to you. I made those with scraps and they still worked great. You don’t need to (actually you don’t want to) have it puff too much in the oven, that’s why you need to put something heavy on the top. 🙂 Let me know!!
Hi Manu,
Just reviewing the first batch (I did 9 rectangles as a tester).
The ones which I cut across the layers have kind of flaked apart and gotten really wide (maybe from the pressure). The which I cut in line with the layers (3-4 layers) have retained shape and seem to be browning nicely!
10 minutes left then cooling, I’ll be in touch when it’s tasting time!
Ok, I think I was putting too much pressure. The ones I didn’t really have much pressure on came out perfectly rectangular, slightly puffy, golden, delicious. The ones which were right under the tray I used as a weight were all fanned out and much too wide, crumbly and dark.
I made a few smaller batches until I got it right and assembled 4. They disappeared almost immediately, along with all the ‘seconds’ pile smothered in the left over custard cream.
I took a few pictures, I’ll upload and post tomorrow. Thanks Manu, can’t wait to try your croissants another time soon!
Yeahhh! I am so happy it was a success and you liked it! Can’t wait to see the pictures! 🙂
Thanks for the recipe.Just back from Paris,cant wait to try this.
Hi, Manu,
I’ve been eyeing this recipe of yours ever since i came across it a few months ago. I finally have the time and all the ingredients to attempt it! My husband is North African and grew up eating this, so I wanted to try my hand at making it for him. It’s a very hard dessert to find the US.
So I used store bought puff pastry this time, and made the creme patisserie as per your recipe. It came out lumpy and runny. 🙁 It tastes great though. Any tips? I let it cool on the stovetop, did not refrigerate it because I had an appointment and had to rush out of the house. Could that be the culprit?
Any insight is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!
Hi Safi! My guess is that the flour didn’t mix well with the milk and eggs. That’s probably you’ve got lumps and liquid cream. Try and use a hand mixer to make sure it’s all uniformly mixed and bring it back to the boil… hopefully it will thicken.
Hi, can you please tell me if I can make the creme patissiere and bake the pastry two days earlier and only layer the cakes with the pastry the day when it’ll be eaten?
Yes, you can make everything in advance and then layer it the day you want to serve it. Do not make the creme patissiere too much in advance though (one day would be best) as it doesn’t keep for long, even in the fridge.