An essential dessert of French pastry, the mille-feuille brings together many techniques such as those of puff pastry or pastry cream. Its origins can be traced back to the 17th century.

A mille-feuille or millefeuille is a piece of pastry made with three layers of puff pastry and two layers of pastry cream. The top is glazed with icing sugar or fondant. It would have been created by François Pierre de La Varenne, in 1651. It would then have been perfected by Marie-Antoine Carême, cook of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord. Many professional pastry chefs only date it back to 1867, when it was offered as a specialty of the famous pastry chef Adolphe Seugnot, then based at 28 rue du Bac in Paris. Easy to prepare, crispy and delicate, it is perfect as a snack during the day or at the end of a meal.

Ingredients for 8 individual mille feuiles :

500g puff pastry

Custard :

150g sugar

100g soft butter

3 egg yolks

50 cl of milk

50g flour

2 sheets of gelatin

Glazing and marbling :

1 egg white

150g icing sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

A cup of dark chocolate

Working and baking the puff pastry

• Roll out the dough into a 45 x 30 cm rectangle.

• Flatten the dough (about 3 mm thick).

• Prick it with a fork.

• Cut 3 rectangles of 15 x 30 cm.

• Arrange them between two baking sheets.

• Bake for 20 min at 180°C.

• Let the dough cool completely.

Preparation of pastry cream

• Split the vanilla pod in half.

• Put the milk to boil with the vanilla pod.

• Mix the egg yolks in a bowl (keep an egg white for the glaze), the sugar and the flour.

• When boiling, pour the vanilla milk into the bowl.

• Mix well.

• Pour and heat the mixture in the saucepan until it thickens (3 min).

• Leave the cream to cool.

• Then add the softened butter and mix.

• In a bowl of water, let the gelatin soften then melt it for 20 seconds in the microwave.

• Add to the pastry cream and chill. Assembly

• Take a first rectangle of dough and spread the pastry cream with a metal spatula.

• Position a second rectangle on top and spread a second layer of pastry cream.

• Finally arrange the last rectangle. Glazing and marbling

• Mix the icing sugar with the egg white and the lemon juice until you get a fairly thick consistency.

• Spread the white icing evenly over the entire millefeuille.

• Soften the chocolate, pour into a nozzle and proceed to marbling.

• Put it in the freezer before serving.