Mille-feuille, my version of the classic French dessert is made of puff pastry layers filled with whipped cream and pistachio crunch.
What is mille-feuille?
Mille-feuille means a thousand leaves, and we have to take the number on trust: it refers to the flaky layers that make up puff pastry.
It is in fact however not far from the truth if you do a little maths on how the puff pastry is made.
Simple dough of flour and water is rolled out and layered with cold butter, then folded over the butter several times with chilling intervals, thus creating layer upon layer of very thin dough interspersed with just as thin sheets of butter.
The pastry is kept cold at all times, lest the butter softens and leaks out. Once the required layer number is achieved and the pastry is baked in a hot oven, the butter in between the dough strata rapidly cooks into the dough, creating separation and wonderful flakiness. Like a thousand leaves.
Mille-feuille, the dessert
And the dessert made from three planks (which suggests each puff portion has over three hundred ‘leaves’) of puff pastry, pâte feuilletée in French, is traditionally filled with crème pâtissier or pastry cream. The top plank is usually iced and decorated with chevrons made out in cocoa-coloured fondant icing.
Probably because ‘mille-feuille’ is a bit of a struggle for a non-French speaker to pronounce, the cake is also known as ‘Napoleon’ in parts of the world. Or you could follow the Weather Man’s example and call it ‘millie fuel’.
Filling variations
Pastry cream is the cannon, but other kinds of filling are also popular. Most are the variations of crème pâtissier: crème diplomat is pastry cream folded into whipped cream; mousseline is butter whisked into the custard.
But the simplest and arguably the nicest filling is simple Chantilly cream: billowing whipped cream lightly sweetened and flavoured with vanilla. In my recipe it is additionally encrusted with crunchy pistachio chunks, making for a lovely texture.
Baking puff pastry layers
There are different approaches to the baking of those thousand layers. Somewhat perversely, you don’t want puffed-up pastry in this dessert: the pastry sheets are supposed to be level, and more crunchy than puffy. So in order to constrain the rise of the layers in the oven, the pastry should be docked i.e. pricked all over with a fork, to keep it flat.
Another measure of pastry control is to weigh it down with another baking tray when it goes into the oven. After about 10 minutes we should take the weight off to allow the pastry to relax a little and to brown.
Make sure you buy all-butter pastry!
You think puff pastry is by default made with butter, right? Wrong!
I realised to my dismay that most UK supermarkets and the popular ready-made pastry brand consider the vegan version of the pastry to be standard.
As much as I have nothing against vegans, I am not one and want butter in my puff pastry. Especially that the vegan version contains palm oil and a handful of other nasties like emulsifiers, stabilisers and colourants.
All-butter pastry still exists but you should be careful it’s marked thus – and no particular wonder it is usually in shorter supply on the shop shelves. It is, quite simply, better - and vegans can keep their margerine-flavoured rubbish.
How to prepare the pistachio crunch
Raw pistachio kernels, chopped into crumbs, are cooked with sugar which melts into simple caramel and coats the pistachio pieces. Once it cools down, it can be used in recipes like this one, or eaten as an incredibly moreish snack.
The same process can be applied to any nuts or almonds you’d like to turn into sweet crunchy crumbs.
How to make Chantilly cream?
I like to mix some crème fraiche into double cream for whipping, to give it a hint of a tang. The amount of sugar I recommend is restrained: only one tablespoon per 100 grams of cream. But bearing in mind that the pastry is unsweetened, you might want to increase the sugar amount to suit your taste.
I also advise to whip it to quite a firm consistency, so it holds better between the layers of pastry. Just watch it doesn’t turn into butter.
Assembling mille-feuille
I prefer to cut raw pastry into desired pieces, but some recipes tell you to bake a sheet of it, then cut it into small squares with a serrated knife. Which is fine, but carries a risk of breaking, crumbling and a general disaster.
Arrange your pastry pieces on a board, spoon the cream over the designated bottom and middle layers (12 in all), then scatter the pistachio crumb over the cream.
Stack them on top of each other into six double-deckers. The ‘roof’ pieces should be spread with lemon curd and arranged on top. Finish them with pistachio crumb and dust with icing sugar.
Note: these are very generous portions. If your appetites are smaller, you can halve the size of individual pastry pieces and make 12 tiny desserts. My photos here show large portions, and I was making just three of them for the picture session, in case you were surprised the amounts in pictures and recipe don’t tally.
More puff pastry recipes
Fig and prosciutto tart with ready-rolled puff pastry takes about five minutes to prepare and twenty to bake. A divine, seasonal lunch or starter dish, best made with gorgeous Bursa figs.
Sweet puff pastry straws brushed with jam and sugar glaze, twice baked and still the easiest biscuits there are. Shop-bought or homemade puff pastry sheet makes dessert ready in less than an hour.
Mini party rolls, filled with chipolata sausages or ham and cheese filling. They are easy to prepare and invariably the biggest hit with party people.
More French dessert recipes
Triple chocolate profiteroles, made with choux pastry filled with Chantilly and chocolate mousse, glazed with white and dark chocolate sauce.
French classic madeleines recipe, flavoured with lemon zest. Madeleine recipe combines egg whites with clarified butter and it gives you the classic taste of the famous French biscuit.
Cherry cream dacquoise is an exquisite gateau which is far easier to make than you’d think. Almond meringue dacquoise layers filled with fresh cream and homemade candied cherries are a riff on black forest gateau.