A week ago I went to a Sugar Shack and I had a completely amazing Maple Mille Feuille. Ever since then I’ve thought about recreating the recipe. Since Easter was coming up I decided to try out my version this weekend. I’ve never made a Mille Feuille before so I played around with a version that I found in Martha Stewart’s Baking Handbook and adapted it to a maple syrup version.
To start off I rolled out a package of puff pastry.
A lot of Mille Feuilles have three layers of pastry but I decided just to make two. The puff pastry I buy comes scored down the middle so that’s why it looks like two sheets side by side rather than just one.
I baked both layers until they were golden brown. The pastry puffed up a lot so I just patted them down a bit so that they were even.
You can find the pastry cream recipe here. Pastry cream sounds intimidating but it is really easy. The recipe calls for whole milk but since we buy 2% I just mixed some of it with a few tablespoons of heavy cream.
The recipe also calls for egg yolks.
White sugar.
and cornstarch as well as a pinch of salt.
All mixed together.
Ok, the next part is where you have to be careful or you will end up with scrambled eggs. You need to heat up the milk and then carefully pour it bit by bit into the egg mixture. By raising up the temperature of the eggs gradually you make sure that they don’t cook on the spot and you don’t end up with little eggy bits in your cream.
You then need to pour it back into the pan and bring it up to a boil while whisking constantly to make sure that you don’t end up with lumps. Normally there would be a vanilla bean in the milk at this stage but since I wanted to flavour the pastry cream with maple I left it out.
After a few minutes it was nice and thick with a lovely sunny colour.
Since maple syrup would make the filling too liquid I decided to use maple butter. Maple butter is basically maple syrup which has been reduced until it is a spreadable consistency. In spite of the name there isn’t any butter or dairy in it, it is just pure maple syrup.
To finish off the pastry cream I added in a generous amount of maple butter and a tablespoon of cream.
I used a beater to incorporate the maple butter and kept on tasting and adding more until the maple taste was strong enough.
I put the pastry cream in the fridge to thicken with plastic wrap directly on top to make sure that it didn’t form a skin.
In addition to the pastry cream I wanted to put whipped cream in the middle. To add another bit of maple flavour I added some to the whipped cream to sweeten it.
Since I wanted to make sure that the whipped cream didn’t become liquid I didn’t add too much maple syrup.
Now for putting the Mille Feuille together: first, a layer of puff pastry.
Followed by a thick layer of the maple pastry cream. I left a slight border around since I knew that the weight of the top layer would push the filling outward.
Next was the whipped cream.
It was already starting to look really good.
Then the top layer. It looks like a gigantic Passion Flakie doesn’t it? (For you non-Canadians it is one of these.)
For the icing on top I used icing sugar, a splash of milk and maple syrup.
Since puff pastry flakes easily and isn’t the easiest surface on which to smooth out icing I made it more liquid than usual.
A bit ended up dripping off the sides but not too much.
The Mille Feuille was amazing. Flaky cream + smooth maple filling + slightly sweetened whipped cream = amazing. This made a ton and even right now we have at least half sitting in the fridge. I suggested to The Husband that we could freeze it and he gave me a look and said “are you crazy?! I’ll eat it!”. So The Husband is taking one for the team and finishing it off. lol. I might be helping him to make a dent in it though.
