Bravely Baking: Mixed Berry Mille-Feuille

A Mille-Feuille is a French pastry with layers of puff pastry, pastry cream, and whatever else you want to put in it. This is delicious. Hard to eat, but tasty. I did a mixed berry Mille-Feuille, and it was kind of like a glorified toaster strudel. I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. I mean that in a nostalgic way.

Um, I didn’t completely use a recipe for this one, so I’ll try to explain what I did do.

Here’s the website I looked at for inspiration: https://realfood.tesco.com/step-by-step/how-to-make-mille-feuille.html#pdydH1MvQQc5k51i.99

Pastry Cream:

I used the recipe that I used for the pastry cream of my éclairs for the pastry cream of this recipe as well. Let’s start here because you need to prepare this in advance and allow time to cool. Here’s the recipe:

1 c whole milk

2/3 c heavy whipping cream

½ c granulated sugar

Pinch of salt

4 large egg yolks

½ c flour

4 tbsp unsalted butter, cold

1 vanilla bean *I didn’t use a vanilla bean, I used extract. I just put in the extract at the end, off of the heat so that it wouldn’t burn.

1. In a medium heat-proof mixing bowl, whisk together egg yolks, salt, and sugar until completely combined and a bit frothy.

2. Add flour and set aside while heating milk.

3. Heat milk, heavy cream, butter, and vanilla bean (or don’t put in vanilla now if it’s extract) on the stove until simmering. Take off the heat when mixture starts to simmer *you don’t want it to boil.

4. Slowly add milk mixture into the egg yolk mixture, stirring constantly. Whisk well. *Be gentle- you don’t want to cook the eggs, so baby steps here, folks.

5. Return the mixture to the pan and bring to a simmer, stirring constantly. The mixture will thicken within a few minutes. Take off heat once it’s thick. *You’ll know when it’s thick. It like all of a sudden is like stirring wet concrete.

6. Cool to room temperature and transfer into a bowl with a lid to be refrigerated. It needs to cool at least four hours or overnight.

Preparing the Pastry:

1 box of prepared puff pastry *Yes, I used store-bought puff pastry because, as I said in my puff pastry post, you get one. One. Not doing that shit again. If you want to make your own puff pastry for this, see my puff post!

1. Preheat oven to 400F.

2. Cut along the creases of the puff so that there are three rectangles. *The “recipe” says to roll it out to 2-3 mm thick. I didn’t do this. It was fine. It also doesn’t tell you to cut until it’s out of the oven. That felt like folly to me, so I cut it before.

3. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Prick all over with a fork.

4. Add another piece of parchment paper to the top, and place a second baking sheet on top of the dough. *this will not let the puff, well puff, too much. It keeps your layers of puff thin.

5. Bake for 15 – 20 minutes until golden.

6. Allow to cool on a baking rack. *Take a minute to stare at it and let it know how loved he is. Oh puff, you have my heart.

Mixed Berry Coulis:

½ c strawberries

½ c raspberries *You can do whatever kind of berries you want. I just had these, so that’s what I used.

½ c sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

1. In a medium saucepan, combine the berries and sugar. Bring to a boil over medium heat. Let thicken for a few minutes.

2. Take off the heat and add lemon juice.

3. Blend the mixture, either with an immersion blender, or transfer to a blender. *If you’re putting it in a blender, be careful! This is hot liquid, so make sure you allow a place for the steam to vent.

4. Sieve to get out any seeds.

5. Put in the fridge until you’re ready to assemble.

Icing:

1 c powdered sugar

2 – 3 tbsp water

1. Is this really a recipe? No. Just combine until you get a consistency that you want. You want it to be runny, but also not drizzle all the way off your pastry.

*I also sub a little of the water for vanilla or even lemon would be good here because you have berries. You just need some kind of liquid, so you do you, boo.

Assembly:

1. Take cooled pastry cream, put in a pastry bag with any desired tip, or just a Ziploc bag with the corner cut off is fine.

2. Place one puff pastry rectangle onto a serving plate.

3. Pipe pastry cream onto the puff pastry. *You can do this however you want. You do want a pretty thick layer. I did big round dollops so that I could put berries in between or on top of them. For the bottom layer, I did raspberries in between the cream dollops.