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.

Believe it or not, I used to hate rice pudding for the longest time, as well as cooked fruits. I realize now that the trick to liking something you might not prefer is to actually try making it yourself. This way you can incorporate things you like into the meal to make it more palatable for you.

Rice pudding was a first for everyone at home, and it turned out to be a real winner for our Sunday dessert. Either than the fact that it is quite a HEAVY dessert, it is very delicious. Make sure you have a light meal before eating it.

There is a lot of variations when it comes to rice pudding. Most of the puddings I have tasted were mushy and resembled oatmeal, which is what I actually did not like. This time I retained the chewy-ness of the rice and added toasted almonds to give it some crunch.

Ingredients:

• 1 Cup Uncooked Rice
• 1 Cup Milk
• 1 Cup Water
• 30ml Sugar
• 12.5ml Honey
• Pinch of Nutmeg
• 25ml Butter
• 5ml Vanilla Essence
• 2.5ml Almond Essence
• 1 Cup Cream
• 25ml Castor Sugar
• 1/2 Cup Silvered Almonds
• Strawberry Sauce:
• 500ml Strawberries, Halved
• 85ml Sugar
• 25ml Water
• 12.5ml Cornstarch
• 10ml Lemon Juice

Method:

• Combine rice, milk, water, granulated sugar, honey and nutmeg in a small saucepan and simmer on low heat, until the rice is cooked and tender.
• Stir in butter and the essences, then cool the rice to room temperature.
• Cover rice in an airtight container and refrigerate.
• Whip cream and castor sugar to stiff peaks and stir into the cooled rice, then refrigerate again.
• Toast almonds in a small saucepan, cool and fold into the rice pudding.

Strawberry Sauce:

• Combine all ingredient and cook on medium heat, stirring continuously till the sauce thickens. This should take about 5 minutes.
• NB! Careful not to over cook sauce, sugar hardens if cooked for too long.
• You can either use the sauce warm on the rice pudding or you can cool and refrigerate it