Not so long ago I had a millefeuille (read: very posh custard slice) from Petit Trésor, a patisserie in South Melbourne. It had simple vanilla crème patissiere inside, but the coup de grace was its amazing toasty pastry – tight packed leaves of caramel brown, which shattered under your fork and flaked in your mouth. So while I was in Wanaka, NZ, I had to try out the method on my custard slice loving cousin Geoff, his wife Juile, and their unwitting (but ultimately very happy) friends.
Naturally, Moose the Hungarian Vizsla “supervised” in the kitchen and taste tested anything he could get!
Crème Patissiere being met with approval
Your standard cheapo bakery custard slice never has this type of pastry: it’s a bit tough, quite impossible to cut without (and sometimes with) a knife, and pretty stodgy. One of the reasons for this is that they don’t bake it the Frenchy-French way. More on that later.
I love a good custard square, and for years made them in the standard “Australian Woman’s Weekly” manner: bake puff pastry, flatten the puffs, trim it, chuck warm custard over, add top pastry, chill, ice with passionfruit icing, cut. It’s yummy but a real pain to eat. I usually just halve the thing through the custard and eat each side like an open sandwich.
Not so with my millefeuille recipe: well… it’s still messy to eat, but that’s because of flakiness, rather than toughness, and this is an unqualified improvement. The secret to this gorgeous caramel pastry? Well, the pastry is pricked very well…
…then baked between two trays, which keeps the flakes completely parallel, and delivers an even heat to the whole of the pastry, allowing perfect browning. As an added bonus, the pastry is baked again for a short time with a sprinkling of icing sugar on top. The sugar caramelises into a perfect shiny coating.
It’s patisserie poetry. It’s also dead easy, because you can use sheets of ready rolled pasty to get the job done!
As for the filling, I’ve had a fascination for rhubarb since my trip to Denmark (where it featured on just about every menu I saw), so rhubarb curd seemed like a great place to start. It’s thickened with gelatine to make a stable mixture which will cope with free-form assembly (with no oozing!). The rhubarb curd is paired with stabilised crème patissiere, lightened with whipped cream and flavoured with vanilla bean and a touch of rosewater.
I’m not ashamed to say: nailed it again! My taste testers quietly got on with the job of noshing their millefeuilles with gusto (you always know how good something is by the sudden lack of chatter) and some amongst them expressed marked displeasure at the fact I had only made one each.
Don’t let the apparent length of the recipe scare you off, the components are very simple and the results are beyond heaven!
Rose Rhubarb Millefeuille
Makes 12 servings
Millefeuille Pastry
You will need two baking sheets that can be stacked snugly against each other for this recipe. If your baking sheets are big enough, you can bake the pastry sheets two at a time.
ingredients
4 sheets ready rolled puff pastry (defrosted)
icing sugar for dusting
baking
Working one sheet of pastry at a time; place a sheet of pastry onto a baking sheet and prick very well all over with a fork (the prick marks should be about 5mm-1cm apart). Place a second baking sheet directly on top of the pastry. Bake the assembly for about 20 minutes at 220 degrees Celsius, or until the pastry is very golden.
Remove the pastry from the oven and lift off the top baking sheet. Using a small sieve, dust the surface of the cooked pastry liberally with icing sugar, so that it is completely and evenly covered. Return to the oven for a further 5 minutes, or until the pastry is dark golden brown and the icing sugar has melted to form a clear layer of caramel on the surface. Let the pastry cool.
Rhubarb Curd
ingredients
400g rhubarb
300g caster sugar
200g butter
3 eggs, very well beaten
1/4 tsp ground vanilla bean
12 g gelatine leaves
mixing
Dice the rhubarb and place in a medium saucepan. Add water to just cover the rhubarb. Cook on a medium heat for about five minutes or until the rhubarb is tender. Drain well and set aside to cool. When cool, puree the rhubarb with a blender or a stick mixer.
Combine the sugar and butter together in a heavy based saucepan, heat over a medium heat, stirring all the time, until the sugar starts to melt (the mixture will take on a thick gooey texture). Remove from the heat, stir in the cooled rhubarb puree and vanilla bean, and cool. When the mixture is room temperature, whisk in the eggs until completely combined. Return the saucepan to a low heat, and cook, stirring all the time with a wire whisk, until the mixture thickens like a custard – about 10 minutes, but do not let the mixture boil. Let the mixture cool a little.
Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the excess water and add to the (still hot) rhubarb curd. Stir until the gelatine is completely dissolved. Refrigerate the mixture, stirring occasionally to aid even cooling, until set.
Rose Crème Patissiere
ingredients
500mL milk
1 vanilla bean
6 egg yolks
2 tbsp sugar
5 tbsp cornflour
1 tbsp rose water
6 g gelatine leaves
250mL whipping cream (35% milkfat)
mixing
Split the vanilla bean in half lengthways and add to a medium saucepan along with the milk. Heat until nearly boiling, then remove from the heat. While the milk is heating, whisk the egg yolks, sugar and cornflour together in a bowl.
Fish the vanilla bean out of the saucepan and set aside. Immediately pour the hot milk over the egg mixture in a thin stream, whisking all the while. When all the milk is incorporated, return the mixture to a clean saucepan. Scrape the seeds from the centre of the vanilla bean and return to the mixture.
Cook the mixture over a gentle heat, stirring constantly, until the custard thickens and boils. Remove from the heat. Let cool slightly.
Soak the gelatine leaves in cold water for 10 minutes, then squeeze out the excess water and add to the (still hot) custard. Stir until the gelatine is completely dissolved. Cover the mixture with a film of cling wrap placed directly onto the surface of the custard and let cool to luke warm. Whip the cream to stiff peaks. Fold about a third into the custard mixture to lighten it, the fold in the rest of the cream. Refrigerate until set.
Assembly
You can assemble these on the hop or a couple of hours before serving if you prefer.
Trim any wonky edges from the pastry squares (making sure that each square has the same dimensions!) and cut each square into six even pieces. Load the Rhubarb Curd and the Rose Crème Patissiere into separate piping bags fitted with a star nozzle (or alternatively, practice making quenelles with two dessert spoons! I made them using the quenelle method – didn’t have any piping bags to hand).
Set a piece of pastry onto a serving plate or platter; pipe on about 1/2 cup of curd (three quenelles), followed by the same amount of crème patissiere. If making quenelles, set them on opposing angles, so that they don’t slip against each other!
Top with another piece of pastry and press down lightly.
Finally, if desired, place strips of baking paper over the top of the millefeuilles to make an attractive pattern (I used zigzag strips) and dust with icing sugar.
Enjoy!xxx
