So its been 2 weeks, we know, you’re all over the bake off finishing… but we aren’t okay?!? So we made mille feuille this week as an attempt at sweet, sweet nostalgia for our favourite program. Mille Feuille is french for ‘a thousand leaves’ or something like that, but all we really care about is that it’s delicious.
This was the technical challenge in the final and a pretty tough feat, time pressure when making puff pastry isn’t ideal. We, however, are not on the bake off, so can take all the time we like making our pastry or all the time we like popping to the shop and buying some ready-made…
We’ve stuck to pretty much the same recipe the finalists used, with raspberries and Chantilly cream in between layers of crisp pastry, then topped with pink and white stripped icing. This is our last bake from the final and the last bake off inspired bake until next year… probably… maybe… (we have difficulty letting go).
- 500g puff pastry
- 200g raspberry jam
- 25g caster sugar
- 50ml water
- 250g white ready-to-roll fondant icing
- 125g pink ready-to-roll fondant icing
- 600ml double cream
- 50g icing sugar
- ½ tsp vanilla paste
- 48 raspberries
- Preheat the oven to 220°C.
- Line 3 large baking trays with baking parchment. Divide the pastry into 3 equal pieces and roll each piece to a 30x23cm/12x9in rectangle, about 5mm thick.
- Then place each pastry rectangle onto the lined baking trays and chill for 10-15 minutes. Dust heavily with icing sugar.
- Place a sheet of baking parchment on top of each sheet of rolled pastry and place a large baking sheet on top.
- Bake the pastry sheets for 10-15 minutes, or until golden-brown and crisp.
- Bring the sugar and 50ml water to the boil in a small pan and cook for 1 minute. Remove from the heat and leave to cool.
- Roll the white fondant into a 20x15cm/8x6in rectangle. Roll the pink icing into a 10x15cm/4x6in rectangle.
- Cut the pink icing into 10 strips, each 1cm/½in wide and 15cm/6in long.
- Lay the pink strips on top of the white icing, ensuring they are evenly spaced with approximately 1cm/½in between each strip. Roll over them with a rolling pin to fix the stripes in place.
- Cut out 6 neat rectangles from the striped icing, each measuring 12x5cm/4½x2in and with the stripes facing the same way, so the tops of the millefeuille match.
- When the pastry has cooled, cut six 12x5cm/4½x2in rectangles of pastry from each sheet, so you have 18 pastry rectangles.
- Whisk the cream, icing sugar and vanilla to soft peaks. Spoon into a disposable piping bag.
- To assemble, set aside 6 pastry rectangles. Spread a thin layer of jam over the remaining pastry rectangles.
- Pipe a blob of cream in a corner of one of the pastry rectangles. Sit a raspberry next to it and continue piping cream with alternating raspberries until the pastry is covered. Repeat this process on the remaining the pastry rectangles.
- Sit the rectangles on top of each other so you have 6, double-layered pastries, topped with raspberries and cream.
- Brush sugar syrup over the remaining 6 pastry rectangles and stick the striped fondant rectangles to the pastry. Place on top of the raspberries and cream and brush with more sugar syrup to glaze.
We found this recipe pretty easy but thats probably down to the lack of bake off tent pressure and shop bought pastry… They are really tasty though, and theres plenty of cut offs of pastry which are ideal for shoving in your mouth while you finish the bake.
