Baking Bouchon - Recipe 80: Mille-feuille

Guess what y'all...

It's been exactly one year since I started this little space of mine.  Can you believe it?

I can't.  It feels like yesterday until I look at the title of this post and realize I've made 80 recipes from the Bouchon Bakery Cookbook, not to mention the more than 200 other posts.  Are you all sick of me yet?

Too bad.  I'm having too much fun so I intend to stick around.

This dessert has a fancy French name but you probably know it by its American name - the Napolean.  It is essentially puff pastry layered with Mousseline cream which is a mixture of pastry cream and buttercream frosting.

Napoleans are really beautiful desserts with delicate layers of pastry and rich layers of cream that form a tower of deliciousness and I had high hopes for this one until the very end.

I did not document for you again how to make pastry cream or buttercream or puff pastry.  You are welcome to go back into the archives and relive it if you wish.

The pastry cream and buttercream get made separately and then whipped together.  All of that gets spread into a 9"x13" pan and frozen until its solid enough to be sliced into big rectangles.

The puff pastry dough gets rolled out and baked, however you have to weigh it down so it doesn't actually puff up.  Once it's baked and cooled you very carefully cut it into wedges.  I was super worried when I started cutting the pastry that it would disintegrate into a big crumbly mess but it help up pretty well.

Once you've got big rectangles of mousseline cream and puff pastry, they get stacked up. 

Thomas Keller's instructions say to turn the stacked pastry on its side because it's easier to slice it that way without it crumbling into bits.  It took me about 10 minutes to figure out that this is impossible.  It shouldn't have taken me 10 minutes.  I realized there was no way it was going to stick together enough to rotate it in about 10 seconds, but I spent another 9 minutes and 50 seconds staring at it wondering why Thomas Keller is so much smarter than me.

I gave up, left it vertical and topped it with sweetened whipped cream.  Despite the fact that I couldn't get my finished Napolean on its side I was still optimistic... and then I sliced it.

... and it fell over.

My Napolean was too tall said no one ever.

Despite the fact that my Napolean tilts like the Leaning Tower of Pisa it was pretty delicious.  The filling is rich and creamy and the pastry is flaky and delicate.  It's impossible to eat while maintaining any sort of dignity to wishing you were wearing a lobster bib but it does taste good.

Enjoy!
Julie