Vanilla and caramel Mille-feuille

For the design of this mille-feuille, I got my inspiration from the French pastry chef Christophe Michalak. I like the design of his mille-feuille because it looks great, it is modern and also more convenient than the traditional one. Firstly, because you can simply cut a slice of the size you want as you would do for a loaf cake for example. And secondly because you don’t risk smashing the whole thing when slicing the mille-feuille, as the puff pastry is vertical.

Once again, I made it especially for my father and sister, as it’s one of their favourite pastry. My sister really loved it, she said: « It’s an explosion of flavours, it’s been a while since I have eaten one that good. Fabulous, delicious, divine, excellent, perfect, exquisite ». To be honest, I think she overdid it a but to please me, but anyway, she really really liked it!

This mille-feuille is made of:

• Inverse puff pastry (4 simple folds)

• Vanilla diplomat cream

• Salted caramel

• Vanilla mascarpone chantilly cream

I don’t always post the pastries or cakes I make because sometimes, I’m not fully happy with the result, either tastewise or lookwise. But in life, things are not often perfect the first time you make them… So I’ll try to post more of the pastries I make, even if I’m not fully happy with how they turned out. This mille-feuille is not really failed, but I am a perfectionist, and there a quite a lot of things to improve until I’m happy enough with it to share the recipe:

• The puff pastry is too thick. I rolled it to a 5 mm thickness, but next time I’ll try 3 mm instead.

• The pastry cream had too much gelatine in it, and therefore I didn’t have a smooth diplomat cream.

• The caramel was not thick enough and ran off the mille-feuille.

• The piping of the vanilla chantilly on top of the mille-feuille is very average. I need to improve my piping skills!

I’m planning on making another one later this year to try and make it up to my standard.