Chocolate Mille Feuille

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Not quite Mille Feuille. Cent Feuille?

I totally failed October's Daring Bakers' Challenge, which was Mille Feuille.

I am also really failing at the blogging side of things. The way Daring Bakers works is that you are given a challenge and then, come the 27th of the month, you reveal your attempt. The reveal was why I made this blog in the first place. It turns out that I get really excited for the challenge, check every 20 minutes on the 1st of the month until the challenge goes up, attempt it that weekend (or even that day), and then fail to blog about it four weeks later. By then, I've sort of forgotten the details. And then I procrastinate. And then I feel bad about being late on the reveal. So here I am posting on the 30th.

I did, however, enjoy the mille feuille challenge. Having rocked the puff pastry for the home made croissants, I was totally confident in my ability to make it for the mille feuille. Rather than going with the recipe provided, I decided to go chocolate (surprise, surprise) and I found a beautiful recipe for chocolate puff pastry at Cannelle and Vanille. It makes lovely, puffy, many-layered puff pastry and it's definitely not the recipe's fault that I screwed it up. But I did.

Doesn't that top photo look delicious, though? It doesn't look screwed up at all. But while you might think that those dark layers are delicious chocolate, they are actually un-delicious squished doughy pastry.

I don't know if I rolled the pastry too thickly, didn't cook it for long enough, whether it was some effect of my odd attempt to squish the layers flat that made it come out like that, or maybe I just didn't wait for it to cool enough before putting the mille feuille together. We ate around the squished bits. The rest was delicious.

One thing I did learn, however, was that even if you think you've got the world's ugliest mille feuille, don't immediately despair. Look at this hideous monstrosity:

But look at that flake potential in the corner!

And yet after tossing it in the freezer, trimming it, and decorating the top with ganache and what I'd like to pretend is caramel but is actually peanut butter, it was fairly visually appealing.

And just to emphasize what a lovely puff pastry this was despite my screwing it up, I made the leftovers into palmiers as suggested by the original recipe. They were puffy and delicious and didn't last at all long before they were stuffing J and my bellies. (And then again the next day before J even got home because I didn't want to share.)

Delicious chocolate palmier

For the chocolate puff pastry recipe, pop on over to Cannelle and Vanille because I didn't really change anything. The only thing I'd suggest is being fairly heavy-handed with the sugar for the palmiers, because this puff pastry itself isn't sweet. The chocolate mousse I made to fill my mille feuille was the most ridiculously easy "faux" mousse and I feel a bit silly sharing the recipe. It's barely a recipe at all:

Way Too Easy Chocolate "Mousse" Recipe:

Melt 5 oz of dark chocolate, add flavourings if you'd like (I added 2 tsps rum and 1/2 tsp espresso powder). Let the chocolate cool a bit while you whip up about a cup of cream. Gently fold the chocolate into the cream. If you're piping, do so immediately. Otherwise, chill well before eating.

Look at those beautiful flaky layers!

"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!"