Mille Feuille Cake

Enter now for your chance to win big with this summery mille feuille recipe and make the most beautiful French mille-feuille cake ever. It makes your mouth water once you look at the dessert topped with red fruit and edible flowers.

I often eat cakes for breakfast. Well, I like this way to start my day. But, moreover, I almost always have some dessert at home. And I bake a lot, as you can imagine.

This mille feuille cake with vanilla cream and fresh fruits on top is one of our home's most often baked goodies.

My favorite version of the French mille feuille consists of a single layer of puff pastry. I find that it simplifies making the dessert and facilities eating.

This popular French pastry looks decadent and impressive. Some people call it even sexy.

Despite the seeming difficulty of making it, this mille-feuille recipe is easy to make at home. The key is to use a store-bought puff pastry dough.

Mille feuille meaning

Classic mille-feuille (pronounced meel-foy) is a classic French pastry.

The term mille-feuille is also French and means "one thousand petals" or "one thousand sheets," referring to pastry layering in the dessert.

It is made with three layers of buttery puff pastry filled with rich custard pastry cream. The top is usually sprinkled with icing sugar.

The first recipe for a Millefeuille was published in François Pierre La Varenne's cookbook in 1651.

The cake was decorated with fondant and decorated with a chocolate spider web design on top.

Why you should try this recipe

1. Making this mille feuille cake recipe is a fun baking project with kids: let them pipe cream balls and decorate the cake with edible flowers.
2. Using a store-bought puff pastry saves time in making the crust.
3. Making vanilla cream and crust a day ahead allows you to serve the dessert within a few minutes the next day.
4. The dessert is easy to eat: it is not excessively tall.
5. Replacing vanilla cream with mascarpone whipped cream allows you to serve the dessert within an hour!

Ingredients

For ingredients and detailed instructions, refer to the recipe card below.

Frozen puff pastry: this mille-feuille recipe calls for a store-bought puff pastry. Make sure to purchase square or rectangular puff pastry sheets.

To enjoy its full flavor, buy the puff pastry made from butter and not from the vegetable shortening.

Why? Because you do not want to feel an unpleasant aftertaste from the shortening. 

If you are going to enjoy the homemade puff pastry, make it yourself.

Icing sugar: either make it yourself with a coffee grinder or use store-bought powdered sugar.

Milk: the recipe calls for whole milk.

Whipping cream: use heavy whipping cream of your favorite brand.

Egg yolks: use yolks from large whole eggs.

Gelatin: use gelatin sheets with a strength of 200 bloom. To substitute sheet gelatin, use 8 g of powdered gelatin and ¼ cup (60 ml) of cold water.

Please, take into consideration that there are 3.08 grams of powdered gelatin in 1 teaspoon.

Mascarpone: it is added to stabilize the whipped cream. The only downside of the mascarpone-based whipped cream is that it dries out quickly: you need to serve the dessert after assembling it.

Vanilla pod: to bring the best vanilla flavor to the dessert, use these Madagascar vanilla beans.

Red fruits: use fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, or blackberries. Do not use frozen berries to decorate the cake.

Corn starch, brown sugar.

How to make Mille Feuille

To make the vanilla cream, start one day before. First, soak gelatin in cold water for 10 minutes.

Whisk the remaining ingredients of the cream and seeds of the vanilla bean in a medium pot. Bring the cream to a boil, continually stirring with a hand whisk.

Remove the pan from the heat as soon as the cream thickens. Mix in the drained gelatin (photo 3).

Pour the cream into a shallow dish, cover it with plastic wrap in contact, and chill for 24 hours (photo 2).

To make the crust, preheat oven to 355 degrees F/180 degrees C. 

Thaw a sheet of puff pastry. Using a rolling pin, roll it on a lightly floured work surface and prick with a fork. Cut out a large rectangle (photo 3).

Transfer the dough onto a lined baking tray between two sheets of parchment paper.

Then cover it with a baking sheet or baking tray (not too heavy and, if possible, perforated).

Bake for about 30 minutes rotating the pan halfway through. Make sure that the dough gets a beautiful gold color (photo 4).

To caramelize the puff pastry, take it out of the oven. Remove the second baking sheet and the sheet of parchment paper from the top of the pastry. Sprinkle with icing sugar.

Bring the baking tray with the pastry under the oven grill for a few minutes to caramelize the sugar. The pastry will get deep golden brown color.

It takes about two to three minutes: be careful to watch it out to prevent the pastry from burning (photo 5). 

Remove from the oven and cool completely. With a ruler and a sharp serrated knife, cut a rectangular strip 4'' x 10'' / 10 x 27 cm (photo 6).

Let it cool to room temperature and transfer to a serving platter.

To assemble the cake, whip the cream mixture with an electric mixer to aerate (photo 7).

Transfer the pastry cream to a piping bag fitted with the Ateco plain pastry tube.

Pipe dollops (the size of regular walnuts) onto a caramelized puff rectangle (photo 8).

Decorate the top of the cake with halves of fresh strawberries (photo 9), raspberries, blueberries, or other fresh fruit of your choice.

Arrange edible flowers and mint leaves between fruits and serve immediately (photo 10).

Recipe variations

Traditional mille-feuille is made with three flaky layers of puff pastry and two layers of pastry cream.

Then it is topped with chocolate and vanilla glaze. You can also cover the top with royal icing, a chocolate ganache, or simply dust with powdered sugar.

Nowadays, many French chefs make the dessert with a single layer of puff pastry that is dusted with icing sugar and caramelized.

Then it is covered with a single layer of cream and decorated with seasonal fruit.

Interestingly, there is a savory version of mille-feuille made with cheese and spinach.

Storage

The mille-feuille dessert should be served after being assembled because:

• the mascarpone-based whipped cream tends to dry out quickly;
• the puff pastry layer absorbs the liquid from the cream and loses crispiness.

I would not recommend storing the cake until the next day, even being refrigerated.

To freeze the mille-feuille, set the freezer to -13 °F/-25 °C 8 hours before freezing the dessert.

Place the cooled cake (no fruit on the top) on a cooling rack and bring it to the freezer.

Once it is frozen to the core, place the dessert in a Ziploc freezer bag and store it in a freezer set at -13 °F/-25 °C for 2 months.

Thaw the mille-feuille in the refrigerator overnight. Decorate with fresh fruit if desired.

Expert tips

1. Make sure to cover vanilla cream with plastic film in contact to prevent a crust from forming on the surface while refrigerating.
2. Cover puff pastry with a baking sheet on top of the parchment to prevent extensive puffing of the pastry while baking.
3. Do not burn the pastry while caramelizing. Two to three minutes are enough to get a beautiful result.
4. Cut the end of a pastry bag and decorate the cake with cream balls if you do not have a special tip: it works.

Frequently asked questions

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Recipe card

The nutritional information has been calculated using an online recipe nutrition calculator such as Verywellfit.com and is intended for informational purposes only. These figures should be used as a general guideline and not be construed as a guarantee.

The recipe was adapted from Gourmandises cie. It was originally published on July 07, 2018. The recipe has been revised to include improved content and photos. All posted pictures are mine.