I worked at a french bakery for a year and I never ate a Mille-fueille. I constantly walked passed it because it just looked too sweet for my liking. All that custard and icing was enough to put me off. As I previously mentioned in my previous “Rice Pudding Blog” that the best way to start liking something is to start making it yourself
Mille-Fueillle is a French pastry made of puff pastry slices filled with homemade pastry cream and either dusted or glazed with icing on top. Some variations also contain fresh berries.
The term “Mille-Fueille” translates to thousand leaves, sheets or pages. This is because puff pastry has many layers which result in it looking like a edible book of some sort.

Ingredients:
- 500g Puff Pastry (thawed in the refrigerator)
- 250ml Pastry Cream (Recipe for pastry cream below)
- 250g Strawberries, sliced
- 15g icing sugar, 20g white chocolate.
Pastry Cream:
- 250ml Cream
- 150ml Milk
- 4 Egg Yolks
- 30g Granulated Sugar
- 5ml Vanilla Essence
- 12.5ml Cornflour
Method: Puff Pastry
- Preheat your oven to 200 degrees C.
- Roll out the pastry and cut it into 3 equal rectangles, trimming if necessary.
- Prick pastry all over, then place on a baking sheet, cover with a cloth and chill in the refrigerator for 20+ minutes.
- Bake towards the top of the oven for 20 minutes till golden.
- Leave puff pastry to cool then trim into equal squares.
- Sandwich together two pastry layers with pastry cream and strawberries, then add more pastry cream and strawberries and the last pastry layer to create a 2 tiered pastry.
- Dust the top with icing sugar alternatively, take 25ml milk and mix it with the icing sugar and chocolate then microwave for 20 seconds till the chocolate has melted. Pour on the top layer of the pastry.
- Serve within 5 hours of filling.
- Pastry layers may be made 2 days in advance and stored in an airtight container.
Pastry Cream:
- Bring cream and milk to boiling point.
- Blend the egg yolk, sugar, vanilla essence and cornflour together, then pour the hot milk over, stirring all the time.
- Return the mixture to the saucepan and heat gently, stirring until the sauce has thickened.
- Cover with a piece of greaseproof paper to prevent a skin from forming, and leave to cool.
- If custard splits, just wait for it to cool and whip it till it combines.