The Millefeuille cake recipe may confuse you with the complexity of making the custard, but in fact its preparation is easier than it seems at first glance. In order to create a dessert at home, but without spending the whole day in the kitchen, you can purchase ready-made ingredients in the store and at the market.
You can decorate Mille-feuille as a set of cute cakes, or make a large cake for a group. So, what do we need to prepare this French dessert:
- Puff pastry without yeast – 500 gr.
- One type of berries - 400-500 gr.
(The French classic in the recipe is raspberries, but you can use strawberries or any other soft berries, such as blackberries, blueberries and even cloudberries. The main thing is that they do not “explode” in the mouth.)
Cream ingredients
- Sugar – 5 tablespoons (about 125g)
- Starch and flour - 1 tablespoon each (50 g total)
- Eggs – 2 pcs. large
- Vanilla essence - ¼ teaspoon (or a bag of vanilla sugar)
- Medium fat cream (up to 10%) – 500 ml.
It is important that the cream is not made from powdered milk, since cooking with such milk will ultimately affect the taste of the dessert in a negative way.
Recipe
First of all, let's decide in what form we want to see our dessert.
- If it is a cake, then we thinly roll out the dough into 4 identical squares, pierce the squares with a fork over the entire surface and put them in the oven.
- Set the temperature to 200 degrees and leave the dough for 20-25 minutes. It is important not to open the oven during this time!
- If you decide to make Millefeuille cake for dessert, the recipe is the same - roll out the dough thinly and cut into squares or rectangles of the same size. The classic recipe implies a size of 10 by 20 cm, but for some this size is too large. You can make small squares of 5 by 5 cm, for two “bites”, but, however, such a dessert will not look very good in the photo if you want to capture your creations.
- After the squares are cut and pierced with a fork, we put them in the oven according to the same principle as in the version with cake layers.
- After the dough has browned and risen a little, carefully take out the finished cakes and cool them.
Cream recipe
- Pour the cream into a saucepan, bring it to a boil and set aside
- In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs
- Gradually add sugar, vanilla, starch and sifted flour. Stir until the mixture becomes completely homogeneous.
- Gradually add cream to the egg-flour mixture, stirring thoroughly and quickly.
- Place the bowl in a water bath and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens to the point of homemade sour cream.
- After the cream has become thick enough, set it aside to cool, covering it with a lid so as not to dry out.
- Once it has cooled sufficiently, it must be rubbed through a sieve to avoid lumps.
- We put it in the refrigerator for a while so that it cools down completely, covering the pan with film.
- Place the prepared cakes on a beautiful dish.
- Cover the cake with cream; this is best done using a pastry bag.
- We leave a small space, literally 0.5-1 cm around the edges.
- After this, spread the berries evenly over it, slightly pressing them into the cream layer. Carefully lay them out along the edges so that they occupy the same free space at the edges, but are also pressed into the cream on the other side.
- Cover the top of the berries with cream again and cover with the next cake layer.
- If we make a cake, then we get four layers of dough, berries and cream. In the last layer of the cake we simply arrange the berries beautifully. The cake will turn out tall, but not heavy at all.
- If you make dessert in the form of cakes, then, as a rule, three layers of dough, cream and berries are used.
Decor
The dessert can be topped with mint petals, powdered sugar, fresh ground berry sauce or your favorite jam. Both the cake and the pastries can be cooled a little before serving, but they cannot be stored for a long time, nor should they be left warm for a long time. This is important to consider if you want to take a photo of your creation - like any dessert with fresh berries, the best photos of Millefeuille are obtained if you take a photo of it immediately after preparing it.
Millefeuille without custard
For those who don’t want to bother with custard, there is an excellent and quick recipe - you will get a cake that is not inferior to the first in sophistication:
Ingredients for cream (2nd option)
- Mascarpone – 500 gr.
- Cream (fat content 35%) 250 gr.
- Powdered sugar – 100-150g (to taste)
- Vanilla essence - 1/3 teaspoon (or a bag of vanilla sugar)
Beat all ingredients at low speed and cool in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes. After this, the cream is used in the same way as in the original recipe.
This recipe differs slightly in taste from the classic one, but adds a slight sourness, so when choosing this cream recipe, it is better to combine it with sweeter berries. Cake and pastry with it will retain its shape longer to delight your guests and photo fans on social networks.
Video recipe for making Millefeuille cake
But under no circumstances should you confuse the classic French dessert with Napoleon cake! Pastry maestro Alexander Seleznev will tell you what the difference is and how to prepare Mille-feuille with custard.
RECIPE FOR FRENCH CAKE “MILLEFEUYE”
Necessary:
2 sheets of puff pastry
Custard:
500 ml milk
1 vanilla pod
3 eggs
125 g sugar
20 g flour
20 g corn starch
500 ml cream 33%
1 tbsp. cognac
Sauce:
strawberry
sugar
liquor
powdered sugar - for decoration
How to cook:
1. Pour the milk into a saucepan, add the seeds from the vanilla pod. Boil.
2. Mix the eggs with sugar so that there are no lumps. Add flour and cornstarch, mix vigorously. Add a little still unboiled milk. Whisk the mixture vigorously.
3. As soon as the milk boils, pour in the egg mixture in a very thin stream, never stopping whipping the cream. Boil for a minute. As soon as the cream begins to thicken, remove from heat. Transfer to a clean bowl, cover with a lid to prevent a crust from forming, and cool to room temperature.
4. Roll out the puff pastry as thin as possible, first dusting the table with flour. Carefully transfer the rolled out dough to a baking tray lined with baking paper. In order for the dough to rise evenly during baking, you need to make punctures around the entire perimeter using a knife.
5. Place the dough in the oven, preheated to 200°C, and bake for 20 minutes.
6. Back to the custard. Add cognac and mix thoroughly with a whisk. Carefully fold in the whipped cream to stiff peaks. Mix with a silicone spatula.
7. Cut the finished puff pastry into even strips so that each cake consists of three layers.
8. Using a blender, make crumbs from the scraps of dough.
9. Fill a pastry bag with cream. Pipe cream 1 cm thick onto the first layer of dough. Place fresh strawberries. Pipe a little cream. Cover with a second layer of dough. Pipe the cream. Place raspberries and red currants. Decorate with cream. Cover with a third layer of dough.
10. Using a knife, smooth the sides of the cake and sprinkle them with the prepared crumbs. Sprinkle the surface of the cake with powdered sugar.
11. For the sauce, cut the strawberries into four parts. Pour 1 tbsp onto a heated frying pan. sugar and melt to caramel. Add berries. To prevent them from losing their shape, the sauce must be prepared very quickly. Pour in the liqueur and flambé. Evaporate the alcohol.
12. Serve Millefeuille with hot berry sauce.
“Millefeuille was invented by the French chef Francois Pierre de La Varenne at the end of the 17th century. Since then, the dessert has undergone many changes until it finally came to what it is now: three layers of puff pastry (each with 256 layers), topped with whipped cream, berries and berry sauce or jelly. Translated from French, the word millefeuille means “a thousand petals.” Of course, this is an exaggeration; it is not difficult to calculate that 256 x 3 is less than a thousand.
1.
The dough for mille-feuille is the same as for croissants. You can buy ready-made puff pastry, but it is better, of course, to make it yourself to be sure of the ingredients, taste and quality. Industrial manufacturers often use margarine and palm oil instead of butter.
Pour 375 g of flour into the bowl. Then take 165 ml of water, dissolve 2 g of salt and 2 g of citric acid in it. Citric acid makes the dough soft and elastic. We dissolve the salt and acid in water to be sure that they will fully interact with the dough and will not remain lumps somewhere.
Add water to flour. Break one egg into the dough.
2.
Put the dough to knead in a mixer with a hook attachment for 10 minutes. First, at low speed, until all the ingredients stick together, and then the speed can be increased. Knead the finished dough with your hands, wrap in film and place in the refrigerator for at least half an hour.
3.
At this time, prepare the butter that will be used to layer the dough. Take 250 g of softened butter of 82.5% fat content, chopped as desired, add 25 g of flour, grind everything until smooth. Flour is needed to bond the butter with the dough so that it clings to it.
4.
Place the butter mass on the parchment, spread it in a thin layer so that it forms a square, and wrap it completely in paper.
You can wrap the butter in plastic, but parchment is easier to form into a square and even easier to remove. Paper is denser, so the oil will take the desired shape more quickly.
5.
Roll over the parchment with a rolling pin several times until the mixture becomes flat and thin, no more than 5–7 mm thick. Place the butter in the refrigerator and keep it there until it hardens. This will take about an hour.
6.
While the dough is resting in the refrigerator, prepare the caramel. Pour 250 g of sugar into a saucepan and place on heat slightly higher than medium. Pay close attention to what happens at the bottom, this is where the sugar will begin to melt.
There is no need to stir the mass with anything: if you interfere with the process with a whisk or spatula, the sugar may subsequently crystallize, it is so unpredictable. But since you still need to stir the caramel, do it this way: just shake the saucepan itself a little.
7.
In ten to fifteen minutes the sugar will turn into caramel. Make sure that the sugar does not burn; if this happens, reduce the temperature.
If the temperature is very low, the caramel will take longer to cook and will turn out light. But we need the dark one, it is cooked over higher heat.
8.
Pour the finished caramel in a thin layer onto a silicone mat and leave to cool.
The French love caramel very much, they use it widely, for example, they even make sauces from it.
9.
Take out the dough, roll it out lightly, and then continue to roll it out so that the middle is thicker and the edges are thinner, like petals. Stretch the corners of the dough so that they can then cover the butter.
The surface on which you are rolling out the dough and the rolling pin should be cold. By the way, you can put a rolling pin in the refrigerator for this. The optimal room temperature is 15–17 degrees, which is quite cold. In winter you can open the window, in summer you can turn on the air conditioning. This is necessary so that the butter that we will put on the dough does not begin to melt. Melted butter will cause the dough to tear and stick to the countertop.
10.
Remove the cooled butter. Try to see if it fits in the center of the dough and if it covers the entire edges. If not, set aside the butter and roll out the dough further or stretch it with your hands.
11.
Wrap the butter in the dough as if in an envelope. Make sure that the flour you sprinkle on the dough for rolling does not get between the layers.
12.
The edges of the dough will overlap the butter; press them tightly.
13.
Roll out the dough into a rectangle in two directions - away from you and towards you, but not across. The final thickness should be approximately 1 cm. The length of the piece of dough should be approximately four times the width. Everything must be done very quickly, because the butter melts. Remove excess flour from surface.
14.
Fold the dough. To do this, mentally divide it into three parts. Fold the first two together, one third of the dough will remain, fold it in half. The result is a book where one part is larger, the second is smaller.
If we folded the dough symmetrically, then during subsequent folding the middle would be wrinkled.
15.
Fold the resulting sheet of dough in half. From the side it will look like in the picture. These are our first four layers.
Place the dough in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. Then take it out, roll it out to a thickness of 1 cm, fold it in the same way, and put it back in the refrigerator. Repeat the procedure two more times.
16.
As a result, you will get a dough with 256 layers.
This dough can last a week in the refrigerator, and three months in the freezer. In addition to millefeuille, you can use it to make crumpets, pies, and cakes.
You need to cut it with a very sharp (but not hot) knife or a pizza roller so as not to seal the layers.
17.
Roll out the dough according to the shape of the baking tray so that it is no higher than 5 mm in height. Prick the dough: this is necessary so that the dough does not swell with a pillow during baking and so that the layers catch on each other in places.
Send the dough to bake in the oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 20 minutes. Look at the condition, the dough should be browned on both sides. To prevent it from turning into a pillow, it must be turned over. This is not difficult: at the moment when the surface is already golden brown, open the oven, quickly turn the dough over with the golden brown side down and leave to finish baking. I turn it over with my bare hands; the dough is hard to feel through the gloves and can be broken.
It will take about 10 minutes in the oven on each side. Cool the finished cake.
18.
While the dough is baking, prepare the cream. Beat 200g of cold 33% cream at maximum speed in a blender until soft peaks form, this will take 5-7 minutes. Vegetable cream whips faster and holds its shape longer, but I prefer animal cream, it tastes better.
Check the required texture using the whisk - the cream should hold tightly and not drip. Place the cream in the refrigerator to prevent it from collapsing.
19.
Put 90 g of yolks to beat (this is about 5 pieces). Add the seeds from one vanilla pod to the yolks. I cut the pods in half and lengthwise with scissors, then use a knife to scrape the seeds out onto my finger. This is the most economical option, not a grain will be wasted. Vanilla sugar will not give the desired aroma. The grains in the cream also crunch, which is pleasant both visually and to the taste. There is no need to throw away the pods; they can be added to the sugar syrup during cooking, and it will turn vanilla and take on a pleasant caramel shade.
20.
While the yolks and vanilla are whipping, cook the sugar syrup. Stir 100 g of sugar in 80 ml of water, bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer until the syrup temperature reaches 116 degrees. If you don't have a candy thermometer, try eyeballing the doneness. After about 10 minutes, the bubbles in the syrup will become lazy, small, multi-layered - that means it’s ready. By the way, the syrup should be stirred in the same way as caramel - by moving the saucepan itself.
While you cook the syrup, let the yolks continue to beat, they will not get any worse.
21.
Add hot syrup to the yolks (they should continue to beat), followed by 10 g of gelatin (pre-soaked in cold water and squeezed out). The whole mass will turn out hot, so it makes no sense to melt the gelatin separately. Then add 200 g of mascarpone to the bowl, whisk until everything is smooth. Of course, mascarpone cream is a non-traditional version of cream; usually only whipped cream is used. But it tastes better, although it’s heavier.
Make sure that the mascarpone does not remain on the sides of the bowl. If necessary, stop the mixer, stir the cream with a spatula, and then continue beating.
22.
Add whipped cream to the cream, mix everything with a spatula or whisk. Stir gently from bottom to top so that the cream does not settle. Place the cream in the refrigerator for an hour.
23.
Slice the cold crust. First, cut off the edges, they are uneven. They can be crushed and used for sprinkling, or you can simply eat them.
The shape depends on what size mille-feuille you want to make. Mille feuille can be a portioned dessert, or it can be a cake. For a large cake, cut the large cake into three small squares, for portioned desserts - into small rectangles.
24.
Grind the caramel - break it into medium pieces with your hands and put it in a blender.
25.
The end result should be caramel dust.
- Category: Baking / Puff pastry
- Cooking time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Ingredients for cream:
- Milk – 250 ml
- Eggs – 2 pcs.
- Vanilla – 1 pod
- Sugar – 60 grams
- Flour – 10 grams
- Corn starch – 10 grams
- Cream 33% - 250 ml
- Cognac – 1 tablespoon
- Fresh raspberries
Method for making puff pastry
Making it: Take the prepared homemade puff pastry out of the refrigerator and roll it out onto a sheet. Make small cuts or pierce the dough with a fork over the entire surface so that there are no bubbles during baking (my cuts were too big and the cream seeped through them).
Bake the dough in an oven preheated to 220°C for 20 minutes. Focus on your oven, the dough should rise and brown. 
When ready, remove and cut into 9 equal pieces with a very sharp knife. The edges may not come out very smooth, so we trim the edges to get identical rectangles of dough. The trimmings will be useful to us later. Make crumbs out of them using a blender. 
Okay, now let's make the cream. Pour milk into a saucepan, add vanilla seeds and bring to a boil. At this time, beat the eggs with sugar, then add flour and starch and stir with a whisk or mixer until smooth. You can add a few spoons of hot milk and mix well.
Pour the egg mixture into the boiling milk without ceasing to stir the milk, simmer for a minute or two, as soon as it begins to thicken, remove from heat.
Transfer to a clean bowl, cover, and cool to room temperature. Beat very cold cream with a mixer until stiff peaks form.
Pour a spoonful of cognac into the cooled custard, mix thoroughly, 
and then gently stir in the cream from bottom to top using a spatula. The cream is ready. 
Wash fresh berries (raspberries, strawberries, blueberries, you can mix as you like) and dry thoroughly on a towel. Let's start collecting our dessert.
Place the cream in a pastry bag with a nozzle. 
Cover the first layer of dough with cream, place fresh berries, another layer of cream on top, 
second layer of dough - cream - berries - cream, and cover with a third layer of dough. 
Use a wide knife or spatula to trim the sides, since the cream may protrude along the edges and... 
and roll with puff pastry crumbs. Garnish with cream and fresh berries and enjoy! Bon appetit!
Are you preparing a tastier French dessert? Let's discuss in the reviews.
Thaw the dough and roll it out a little, sprinkling with flour. Cut it into four equal parts. Place them on a baking sheet and cook in the oven until golden brown at 220 Celsius for about 10 minutes.
Take a saucepan with a thick bottom, it is needed for preparing the cream. Place milk, raw chicken yolks, cream, sugar, vanilla, starch and lemon zest into a saucepan. Bring to a simmer over low heat and cook, stirring continuously with a whisk. The cream should thicken a little during cooking.
When the cream is completely ready, it must be cooled. To do this, transfer the sweet mass into any container convenient for you and cover with cling film so that a film does not form on the cream from contact with air.
When the cream has cooled completely, transfer it to a glass bowl. Start beating it with a mixer at high speed, then add softened butter to it and beat again. After a while, add fresh lemon juice without ceasing to beat the cream. You can add a few drops of cognac or amaretto.
Now you need to coat all the puff pastries with the prepared cream. After spreading the first layer, sprinkle it with grated chocolate, then place the second one on top. Do the same with it, and then do this procedure with the third cake. Use the remaining cream to level the surface of the cake.
