Mille feuille crepes cake

Mille-feuille is actually a French dessert, and when translated to English, it means a dessert of a thousand layers. So how is it that the crepes cake is actually only about 20 layers tall (with vanilla pastry cream in between each layer) and not 1000? Granted, it’s pretty difficult to stack up 1000 layers, and it’s going to be too rich to be eaten, but still.

Tell me, how do you pronounce the name? French boggles my mind 🙂

I made the crepes first, followed by the pastry cream. There’s something really therapeutic about standing in front of the stove, and making the crepes. Scoop batter, swirl the pan, cook for a minute, flip it over and repeat. Easy peasy. I think it helps to use a non stick pan.

I really wanted to know if it made a difference if I didn’t add sugar to the batter, so I made a new batch of sugar-free batter. So here’s a comparison. On the left is sugar-free ones, while on the right is the original batter. Sugar makes it browner, me thinks!

I’m gonna use the excess sugar- free crepes for savoury food. Make the vanilla cream the night before, because it requires chilling in the fridge for at least 5 hours.

Assembling the cake:

Plop a dollop of cream on a piece of crepe, even out using a spatula, cover with another piece of crepe, lick finger. Repeat 20 times.

I alternated the layers with sugar-free and sweet crepes, just so that the whole thing isn’t that sweet, but honestly, I don’t think it makes a difference.

Who am I kidding right?

The finished cake:

Oh ugly. Like really ugly. How come they don’t look as gorgeous as those on CreamPuffsinVenice and ParisPastry? Gross gross gross!

So I made chocolate ganache, to cover the entire monstrosity.

After refrigeration overnight..

I need to work on covering a cake with ganache smoothly. Those powdery stuff on the cake? They are gold shimmer. Or something like that. Thought they would give the cake some pizzazzz!

You know you want to see inside the cake right?

Here goes!

SUCCESS!

Recipes below, are adapted from allrecipes.com (for crepes), parispastry (for vanilla cream) and whatsforlunchhoney (for choc ganache).

Ingredients for crepes (makes 20 crepes):

– 6 tablespoons butter
– 3 cups milk
– 6 eggs
– 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
– 7 tablespoons sugar
– 1/2 teaspoon salt

Ingredients for vanilla cream:

– 2 cups milk
– 1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract
– 6 egg yolks
– 1/2 cup sugar
– 1/3 cup cornstarch, sifted
– 3 1/2 tablespoons butter

Ingredients for assembling cake:

– 1 cup heavy cream
– 1 tablespoon sugar

Ingredients for chocolate ganache:

-1 cup heavy cream
– 250g hersheys mini chips
– 50g butter

Directions for crepes batter:

– Cook the butter in a small pan until brown like hazelnuts. (I didn’t wait that long!)
– Mix all wet ingredients together. Add sifted dry ingredients. Strain the mixture through a fine mesh sieve.
— Place a nonstick pan over medium heat and add 1 large scoop of batter and swirl to cover the surface.
– Cook until the bottom just begins to brown, about 1 minute.
– Then carefully lift an edge and flip the crêpe with your fingers.
– Cook on the other side for 5 seconds.
– Flip the crêpe onto a flat surface.
– Repeat until you have 20 perfect crêpes.

Instructions for vanilla pastry cream:

– Bring the milk to a boil.
– Turn off the heat and stir in the vanilla, then set aside for 10 minutes.
– In a medium bowl, whisk together the egg yolks, sugar and cornstarch.
– Gradually whisk in the hot milk, and pour it back into pot.
– Then place the pot over high heat and bring to boil, whisking vigorously for 1 to 2 minutes.
– Press the pastry cream through a fine-meshed sieve into the small bowl. (I tried doing this but nothing went through. whoops)
– Stir in the butter.
– Cover with clingwrap making sure the plastic touches the surface of the cream and refrigerate overnight.

Instructions for assembling the cake:

– Whip the heavy cream with the sugar.
– Fold a quarter into the pastry cream, then the rest.
– Lay 1 crêpe on a cake plate. Using an a rubber or icing spatula, cover with a layer of pastry cream. Repeat until you’ve used all of the crêpes. Lay the best-looking crêpe on top.
– Chill for 2 hours.

Instructions for making the chocolate ganache:

– Bring the cream to a boil in a medium saucepan over a medium heat. Remove from heat and add the chocolate.
– Swirling the pan around allow the chocolate to melt.
– Add the butter and allow to melt mixing occasionally. Let stand for 5 minutes. Stir until smooth.
– Initially I tried to cover the cake with the ganache but it was too liquid. So I placed it in the fridge for about 15 mins till it’s cooled. Whip it with a whisk, and it should be about the consistency of a buttercream frosting before covering the crepes cake.