After a long time I am posting something for Daring Bakers’ (I was kind of scared I’ll be kicked out of the group since I missed so many of the previous ones but luckily that did not happen).
And am I glad that I did not miss this one. Because these Momofuku Milk Bar’s Crack pies are freakishly good….and addictive! I had the hardest time restricting myself to one piece. But restrict I did ( yup, sometimes my will power amazes me) and took a few pieces for my friends and packed the rest for one of V’s colleague.
Rachael from pizzarossa was our lovely June 2013 Daring Bakers’ host and she
had us whipping up delicious pies in our kitchens! Cream pies, fruit pies, chocolate pies, even crack
pies! There’s nothing like pie! 🙂
I am a day late posting this, but the important part is I am posting it.
This month, for the Daring Bakers’, Suz of Serenely Full challenged us to make mille feuilles.
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!
‘Mille-feuille’ is French for ‘a thousand leaves’ (or ‘layers’), which is very apt, as it contains both layers of puff pastry (usually three) and layers within each pastry sheet. It can be filled with layers of jam; mainly raspberry, whipped cream or cheese, and usually topped with powdered sugar, or fondant. It is then usually decorated or garnished with a coat of fondant, with chocolate strings made into a design. It may even contain a filling of pastry cream, as per our challenge recipe.
The challenge required us to make puffy pastry from scratch. Now, I am not a novice to puff pastry- having made it before. Check out my Puff Pastry 101 post here. But I have never tried to make or eaten mille feuilles. So it was something new.
Making puff pastry (or pâte feuilletée) basically involves a simple pastry dough, which is folded around sheet of butter (the beurrage). You then roll out your butter pastry package, fold it, roll it out, fold it, etc. – creating seams of butter that will puff up into distinct crispy layers when baked.
This post was supposed to go live yesterday on the 27th.
I had everything ready (almost) for this post to go live except a few finishing touches which I thought I would be able to do yesterday in a matter of minutes. But yesterday I got no time to sit on my laptop, instead spent the whole day with my friends drinking, being merry and catching the opening ceremony of the London Olympics 2012.
It was a fun day and night, but am back today to post about the Daring Bakers’ Challenge for July.
P.S: It’s my two year Blog anniversary! I had another post lined for today- one with cake (all celebrations need cake!), but guess that will have to wait till tomorrow. 🙂 For now let’s talk about crackers!
