Puff pastry

Puff pastries with vanilla crème pâtissière and  topped with raspberries.

Puff pastries with crème pâtissière, topped with raspberries and a light dust of icing sugar

 Baked these pretty pastry shells in muffin tins with puff pastry 
dough.

Mille-feuille

This pastry is also known as the Napoleon.
My mille-feuille is made up of three layers of puff pastry and alternating with two layers of  pastry cream. The top layer is glazed with icing and chocolate.

My "wallet size"  Napoleon.

Glazed icing on top layer

Pastry cream between layers

La Religieuse

La Religieuse is a French pastry made up of two choux puffs, with one on top of the other and are filled with Crème Pâtissière.The coffee crème pâtissière from Dan is simply delicious.
(Adapted from Dan Lepard's recipe)

Classic French Croissants

Croissant dough is the second laminated dough I am working on now.
The first was puff pastry dough which I made mille feuille with.
Next I will be trying out danish dough.
These three types of laminated dough are slightly different from each other; croissants and danish dough are yeasted while puff dough is not.
Nevertheless, the technique to incorporate the butter into the dough is quite similar for all three recipes.
I used the classic French Croissant Recipe from Jeffrey Hamelman.

Must work fast with the dough to avoid butter melting and spoiling the layers.

Perfect rolling should get 3 rolls, and 7 little steps, and the tip underneath.

More croissants out from oven.

Remaining dough can be cut into rectangular shapes and rolled into petits pains au chocolat

A closer look at the croissant......

Front view

Side view

Cross sectioned views

Vol-au-vents with crème patissière and fresh raspberries.

Using the same puff pastry for the mille feuilles, I have made some Vol-au-vents.
I filled them with  crème patissière and topped with a whole raspberry.

 My platter of puff pastries for tea:)

Mille-feuilles (Napoleons)

This a a French patisserie classic made  up of layers of  buttery puff pastry and crème patissière.

I made the puff pastry from scratch and although tedious, it yielded great results.It tasted great.

Puff pastry was first rolled out and cut into equal length rectangles and baked:

Assembly#1 Raspberry mille feuille: 

3 layers of puff pastries with 2 layers of crème patissière with fresh raspberries.

Assembly#2 Classic mille feuille: 

3 layers of puff pastries with 2 layers of crème patissière and topped with glacé icing.

 

Mont Blanc aux marrons

It is a dessert of puréed, sweetened chestnut cream over a meringue.
The name comes from Mont Blanc, as it resembles the famous snow-capped mountain.

Construction of  Mont Blanc:

Circular cake base with meringue.

Secure meringue with chocolate ganache.

Pipe chestnut cream; covering the whole of meringue.

Fasten decorative dollie to base

Dust with icing sugar for that snow effect.

Yum!

Macarons, macarons....macarons

First batch:
Macarons with peanut butter and ganache filling

Second batch:
Macarons with lemon curd and buttercream

Third batch:
Macarons with vanilla buttercream