Chocolate Mille Feuille - Napoleon (Eggless Version)

This month's Daring Bakers Challenge is hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. She challenged the members of the group to make the famous French Dessert Mille Feuille. It consists of crispy puff pastry (Pâte feuilletée) layers and a soft vanilla pastry cream (Crème Pâtissière) between the layers. It is finished with royal icing and chocolate decorations. As the filling and the royal icing have eggs in it, I went for a egg free version. And as my daughter is crazy about anything chocolatey, I made a chocolate pastry cream. I also made it as individual round pastries but the original recipe suggested making a large rectangular pastry and then slicing it into squares after refrigerating. The pastry was fantastic and the layers it had was mind blowing. It was very crispy and buttery and my daughter without any doubt enjoyed it a lot. As the recipe is quite long, I posted the puff pastry recipe along with stepwise instructions in a separate post. This post deals with the pastry cream and arranging of the final dessert. I made the puff pastry sheets and the pastry cream a day earlier and baked it today. It was a wonderful challenge and I loved it thoroughly.



Ingredients:
Home Made Puff Pastry Sheets - 1 batch

For The Eggless Pastry Cream:
Milk-2 cups
Corn Flour-1/2 cup
Caster Sugar-1 cup
Cocoa Powder-3 tbs
Butter-1/4 cup
Vanilla Essence-2 tsp

For The Topping:
Powdered Sugar-1/2 cup
Water- 2-3tbs
Grated Milk Chocolate

Procedure:
Pastry Cream:
1. In a pan add milk to sugar, cocoa powder and corn flour.
2. Add in the vanilla essence and mix without any lumps. You can also pass the mix through a strainer to get rid of lumps.
3. Heat the mixture. When hot, it starts to thicken. Add butter and stir it continuously to avoid formation of lumps.
4. When the mixture thickens and is cooked, remove from flame and pass it through a wire strainer. This will ensure a smooth pastry cream.
5. Transfer the cream to a bowl and cover it with a cling wrap. The cling film should touch the surface of the cream so that there is no skin formed on cooling.
6. Refrigerate overnight.

Assembling the pastry:
1. Cut the rolled out puff pastry sheet into small rounds. Arrange on a lined baking tray and prick all over with fork.
2. Place another baking paper on the rounds and place another baking tray which fits into the first baking tray. The second baking tray must be heavy and should press the puff pastry rounds evenly.
3. Preheat oven to 200C.
4. Bake the puff pastry for 20 minutes.
5. Then remove the tray on top and the butter paper on top.
6. Bake for another 5 minutes to brown the top.
7. Remove from oven and allow it to cool completely.
8. For 1 pastry you need 3 puff pastry rounds.
9. Pipe a small amount of chilled pastry cream on one round and press another round on top to spread the cream evenly.
10. Pipe some more cream on top of the second round and press the third round on top.
11. Complete the other rounds.
12. Now mix sugar and water to make an icing. Add water little by little until the icing comes to pouring consistency.
13. Now take the icing in teaspoon and pour it on top of the third pastry round and spread it evenly.
14. Sprinkle some grated milk chocolate on top.
15. Finish the other pastries.
16. Refrigerate until serving.




Mix milk, cocoa powder, sugar and essence.




Cook and add butter. Remove from pan when thick.




Pass the cream through a metal sieve to get rid of lumps.




Cover with cling wrap.




Cut the puff pastry into even sized rounds.




Bake until golden.




Sandwich the rounds with pastry cream in between.





Mix sugar and water to pouring consistency.




Pour the icing on top of the rounds and spread.




Sprinkle grated chocolate, chill and serve.

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