Mille feuille is a dessert made from puff pastry and topped with butter cream, fresh fruit or berries. The taste is similar to Napoleon cake, but differs from it in that the cakes remain crispy and not soaked in cream.

According to the recipe, the mille-feuille dessert can be prepared in the form of a tall, but at the same time light cake, or in the form of a portioned cake, which will be more convenient to eat.

You can add any berries and fruits you prefer, but it is recommended to use fresh fruit. Canned and frozen ones can bleed into the cream and make it unappealing.

Collect the cakes, cream and fruit immediately before serving, as mille-feuille cannot be stored for long periods of time.

Millefeuille: classic recipe

Millefeuille with berries

In the classic version, the mille-feuille recipe uses one type of berry - raspberries. You should also stick to a certain size of cakes - 10 by 20 cm.

You will need:

• Cream 10% - 0.5 l.;
• Eggs - 2 pcs.;
• Vanillin - ¼ teaspoon;
  Flour - 1 level tablespoon;
  Starch - 1 tablespoon without top;
• Sugar - 5 tablespoons.
• Puff pastry - 0.5 kg;
• Raspberries or strawberries - 0.4 kg;
• Mint leaves - for decoration.

Preparation:

1. Defrost the dough, roll it out with a rolling pin into a thin layer, 2-3 mm thick and cut into rectangles, 20 cm long and 10 cm wide. Make punctures with a fork over the entire surface, then the dough will not bubble when baking.
2. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Line a baking sheet parchment paper, spread out the dough. Bake for 15-20 minutes. The dough pieces will become a nice, slightly brownish color. Remove the dough from the oven. Cool the portions separately from each other, do not stack them, this will help them stay crispy.
3. Pour the cream into a saucepan and bring it to a boil. Turn off the heat.
4. Beat the eggs with a fork or whisk, add sugar, vanillin, flour and starch, mix until smooth.
5. Pour in the cream in a thin stream, stirring constantly.
6. Place the saucepan in a water bath and cook until thickened, stirring constantly to avoid the appearance of lumps. The cream will acquire the consistency of thick sour cream. Cool. Grind the cooled cream through a sieve to get rid of any lumps. Cool the cream in the refrigerator.
7. Assemble the cake: each cake will consist of three layers. Fill a piping bag with cream. Apply cream in the form of balls onto the cake, leaving space around the edges for the berries. Place the raspberries between the balls and along the edges, lightly pressing the berries into the cream. Cover the top of the berries with a thin layer of cream. Top with a second cake layer, cream and berries. Decorate the third top cake with powdered sugar, a few raspberries and a couple of mint leaves.

Before serving, cool the mille-feuille in the refrigerator for 20-30 minutes, but no more. Bon appetit.

Mille feuille in the form of a cake made from homemade dough

Millefeuille in the form of a cake

You will need:

• Flour - 5.5 cups;
• Butter - 0.6 kg;
• Eggs - 2 large or 3 small;
• Cream 33% - 1000 ml;
• Water - 1 glass;
• Lemon - ½ teaspoon;
• Salt - ¼ teaspoon;
• Powdered sugar - 4 tablespoons;
  Vanilla sugar - 1 pack;
  Confectionery thickener for sour cream - 1 pack;
• Fresh strawberries - as needed;
• Grated chocolate - for dessert decoration.

Preparation:

1. Dissolve salt and lemon in a glass of water.
2. Sift 4 cups of flour through a sieve directly onto the table where you will knead the dough. Make a well in the flour, crack the eggs into it and pour in the water. Add flour little by little to the liquid and knead the dough. It will turn out soft and will not stick to your hands.
3. Cut the butter at room temperature into arbitrary pieces, sprinkle with 1 cup of flour and place in the refrigerator for 15 minutes.
4. Roll out the dough, place butter on top, leaving space around the edges, wrap the dough in an envelope (photo) and roll out. Fold it again into an envelope (photo) and roll it out. There will be 4 such repetitions in total. Wrap the dough in a towel and put it in the refrigerator for a couple of hours.
5. Remove the dough from the refrigerator and roll out into the desired size for the cake. The thickness of the dough should be 2-3 mm, this is a fairly thin dough.
6. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and place in a hot oven. Cook for 5-7 minutes at 180 degrees. The dough will brown. Prepare 3-4 cakes. The cakes must cool completely.
7. Whip the chilled cream, adding powdered sugar and sour cream thickener.
8. Assemble the cake on a serving dish: brush each cake with cream using a pastry bag or syringe, lay out the strawberries cut in half, melting them into the cream, the height of the cream layer with strawberries between the cakes should be approximately 2 cm. Also decorate the top cake with cream and berries, sprinkle with grated chocolate.

Serve immediately after cooking, before the cakes have time to soak in the cream - then they will turn out crispy, as intended. Cut with a very sharp knife so that the dough does not crumble.

The recipe for Millefeuille cake 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 yeast-free dough
• – 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. Classic recipe
• 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

1. Pour the cream into a saucepan, bring it to a boil and set aside
2. In a separate bowl, lightly beat the eggs
3. Gradually add sugar, vanilla, starch and sifted flour. Stir until the mixture becomes completely homogeneous.
4. Gradually add cream to the egg-flour mixture, stirring thoroughly and quickly.
5. Place the bowl in a water bath and cook over low heat, stirring constantly, until it thickens to the point of homemade sour cream.
6. After the cream has become thick enough, set it aside to cool, covering it with a lid so as not to dry out.
7. Once it has cooled sufficiently, it must be rubbed through a sieve to avoid lumps.
8. We put it in the refrigerator for a while so that it cools down completely, covering the pan with film.
9. On beautiful dish lay out the finished cakes.
10. Cover the cake with cream; this is best done using a pastry bag.
11. We leave a small space, literally 0.5-1 cm around the edges.
12. 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.
13. Cover the top of the berries with cream again and cover with the next cake layer.
14. 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.
15. 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, best photos Millefeuille is obtained if you take a photo immediately after cooking it.

Millefeuille without custard

For those who don't want to bother with custard, there is a wonderful and quick recipe– you will get a cake that is not inferior to the first one 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! The maestro of confectionery 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. Ready puff pastry cut 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. Arrange 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.

We take out the frozen dough. You can’t spread it out right away; you need it to thaw. I always wait at room temperature and don’t put it on to warm up. When the dough can be rolled out, I place it on a baking sheet with parchment paper. I pierce it with a fork and wait for it to completely melt.

While the dough thaws and comes to its senses, I’ll make the cream. I put the cottage cheese in a bowl, mix it with powdered sugar and beat with a mixer. I add a little martini and shake again. Then, in another bowl, whip the heavy cream at the highest speed. They should thicken. Then I mix cottage cheese with cream and put everything in the refrigerator.

I bake puff pastry rolled out across the width of a baking sheet in a preheated oven at 200 degrees for 15-20 minutes. Cool the finished dough and cut it with a knife into even squares or rectangles.

Place one square on a plate. Spread a thin layer of jam on it. Cover with the second square. On another plate we also coat the square, only with cream. It would be very good if you put the cream in a special bag and squeeze it out in beautiful patterns. Place a berry on top of the cream (mine is raspberry). It's better to take fresh one. Place the cake with jam on the berries.

“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 butter margarine and palm oil.

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. Lemon 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 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 become 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 sugar syrup when cooked, it will become vanilla and acquire a pleasant caramel hue.

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 it for 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 big 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 result should be caramel dust.