Week 12: Mille Feuille

Hi everyone!

This week I attempted the classic, French dessert that sent sweet Karmen packing last week. It’s the mille feuille! In plain English, it's known as a vanilla slice, but that doesn’t sound half as impressive, does it? 

Almost all mille feuille recipes recommend using store bought pastry, because it’s so much easier. But has anybody ever won MasterChef with pre-packaged pastry? No, they haven't. I don't want easy. I want heartbreakingly, bathroom floor sobbing-ly difficult. Manu’s classic recipe was the closest fit to my brief. Unfortunately he's a judge on MasterChef's rival show, My Kitchen Rules. I felt like I was betraying Matt, Gary and George, by using Manu's recipe, but I couldn't find a better alternative.

Rough puff pastry

Surprise, surprise: I screwed up in a major way. So I decided to start cooking at 5pm. That means that I read the recipe for the first time at 5pm. It turns out that Manu’s ‘proper’ puff pastry recipe takes hours upon hours to make. He literally recommended making it over two days!! But I don’t have time pouring out of my ears, so frankly, Manu and his idealistic recipe can piss off. Luckily, after a little googling, I found MasterChef Zoe’s speedy rough puff pastry recipe.

The problems didn’t stop there. Our household’s food processor is the bane of my existence. It’s older than I am, and even less functional. It’s also ridiculously tiny, so I had to painstakingly split all my pastry ingredients up into two batches. I’m utterly surprised my pastry came out golden and flaky. It was marginally overcooked, but I could hardly blame that on a dodgy food processor.

Crème patisserie

This is what shame looks like.

Unfortunately my first batch of crème patisserie was lumpy, since I didn’t stir it enough. I do think the recipe’s ambiguity is partially at fault, so naturally, I’m going to completely blame the recipe for my failures. Damn you Manu, for ruining my crème patisserie dreams.

Guess what happened next. Somehow, in the process of whipping up a second batch, I managed to drop a bloody egg. I haven’t done that since I was ten! Besides that egg and ego shattering drama, my second lot of crème patisserie came along perfectly.

Fondant Icing

Obviously working with fondant icing and melted chocolate caused an insurmountable amount of chaos and mess. The icing on my mille feuilles was a little lopsided and decidedly asymmetrical, but y’know what? I love them just the way they are. I've never felt more proud of a culinary creation.

A bad photo of beautiful pastry babies

Ranking rubric

Taste: 9.5/10- the pastry, crème patisserie and icing were lovely!

Presentation/resemblance to dish: 8.5/10- they were rustic, ok?

Time: 5/10- Roughly four hours- which could’ve been 3.5 if I had an operative food processor and actually remembered to preheat the oven for once in my sad life.

Kitchen Mess: 1/10- Despite cleaning up twice during the cook, somehow I ended up with an absolute bombsite.

Thanks so much for reading! 

Cheers,

Rosa