Puff Pastry Desserts!

Strawberries were on sale this past week again...so a strawberry dessert for our Bible study was in order! But what to make? I made strawberry shortcake last time. Something that's not cake...

How about puff pastries? A Strawberry Millefeuille? ...Perfect.

A millefeuille (pronounced millu-fee-yu) is made from (traditionally) three layers of puff pastry with vanilla pastry cream in between each layers. The top layer is finished with fondant, but can also be dusted with powdered sugar. The puff pastry...I guess the best way to describe it is that it's like the outermost layer of the flakiest croissant, except about 1/2" thick and in sheets. And did I mention that it's flaky? As a matter of fact, millefeuille means "thousand sheets" in French. When made correctly, these fragile layers will literally shatter into thousand flakes and sheets. A portion of mine seriously turned into a 'leaf pile'. Millefeuille is called 'Napoleon' in other places--probably because 'Napoleon' is just easier to pronounce.

It's been a long time since I've made puff pastry, so this was a good practice. I rolled out the dough as thinly as possible before folding into thirds (called a single-book fold or three-fold). The thing of utmost importance is allowing the dough to rest inbetween each turns in the fridge for at least half an hour. The dough should have at least 5 turns completed to produce satisfactory results. This is why homemade/made from scratch puff pastry takes pretty much an entire day to make. But the difference between homemade and store-bought puff pastry is INCREDIBLE. Most brands of store-bought puff pastries list vegetable shortening as their primary ingredient (not butter), so tend to have this weird aftertaste.

I used the recipe from my textbook, and did 6 turns. Once rolled out into a thin, thin sheet (about 2mm thick) I baked it, and cut it into sheets.
I made the pastry cream, and folded some whipped cream into it...except the cream was a little too soft. After I assembled the whole thing, I put it in the fridge to let it chill and set...except when I checked on it a few hours later, the top two layers had slid off to the side (the plate was tilted, thanks to the crowded condition of our fridge)!
I put it all back together, hiding the flaws with fruits and piped cream. Hiding mistakes and flaws also requires technique.

Strawberry Millefeuille, garnished with chocolate mint leaves. This particular variety of mint has a sweet, candy-like flavor, almost like Andes mint chocolates.

Despite not making it for a while, the puff pastry turned out excellent!

But now I was left with lot of puff pastry ends and pieces. What to do with them...?

...Make more desserts, of course!