Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Mille-feuille/Napoleon!

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baking, Daring Bakers, fall, French, mille-feuille, NaBloPoMo, napoleon, pastry, pastry cream, puff pastry, pumpkin

Our October 2012 Daring Bakers’ challenge was hosted by Suz of Serenely Full. Suz challenged us to not only tackle buttery and flaky puff pastry, but then take it step further and create a sinfully delicious Mille Feuille dessert with it!

So I was supposed to post this six days ago, but since I completed the challenge today, that would have been impossible sans TARDIS. Never mind, it’s done!

I think the last time I had a napoleon was while in college in Baltimore. There’s this dessert place in Little Italy called Vaccaro’s. What I mainly remember about that place was always being so overwhelmed by the size of their desserts. One would have been plenty to share between a few people, so naturally some would compete to see who could finish something off on their own. And then there were randomly waffle sundaes…

Ginger and Vanilla Pear Tarte Tatin with Chocolate Puff Pastry

Tags

baking, chocolate, fancy, France, ginger, pears, puff pastry, recipes

I ain’t gonna lie.  I lost a little sleep over this thing.

That’s part of the challenge with desserts like cakes, pies, and tarts: you can’t sample them to make sure they taste okay!  Wahhh.  It’s probably a good idea to do a test run on them, but when you don’t have much money to spare, that’s not always an option.

That was definitely the case with this tarte tatin, especially because puff pastry is so expensive!  (I am well aware that it’s definitely worth it, though!)  I noticed a few weeks ago that Dufour now makes chocolate (!!!) puff pastry.  Having only heard rave reviews about their original puff pastry, I was very intrigued.  So intrigued, in fact, that I just skipped over the regular stuff and went straight for the chocolate!