I usually refrain from making puff pastry from scratch frequently, because it is such a time-consuming process. Chilling, resting, and rolling a butter-laden dough pretty much summarizes how you make puff pastry. Because you have to rest and chill the dough between rolling it out, it takes at least 90 minutes to make a laminated dough – and that’s the fast method. In this case, I used the fast method, called blitz or rough puff pastry, because it is the lesser of most evils(the only thing faster is using packaged frozen puff pastry, but I already know I’d get hell from anyone and everyone for doing that as a pastry cook, and I myself am too prideful to resort to that). Since I went through the trouble of making the dough, I figured, why not make something that celebrates the puff pastry, in the form of a mille feuille? A mille feuille, translating to “a thousand leaves” or “a thousand layers”, is a French pastry made with layers of puff pastry and usually some kind of cream. It can be sweet or savory, but in this case I went sweet, with a chocolate-hazelnut ganache! I wanted to really keep the components of this recipe minimal – we have the pastry, which is the layers of the dessert and the scraps were used as a garnish on top, and the whipped ganache filling, since the chocolate adds bitterness to contrast the buttery-richness of the pastry!

For the rough puff pastry:
2 sticks unsalted butter, cubed and frozen solid
2 cups all-purpose flour
3/4 cups + 2 tbsp cold water
2 tbsp white or apple cider vinegar
a pinch of salt
1 egg
roughly 1/4 cup confectioner’s/powdered sugar

In a bowl, toss the butter with flour, just making sure that every cube is coated in flour. In another container, mix the water, vinegar, and salt together. Pour the vinegar-water mixture into the flour, and stir until the flour begins to form a dough that has large chunks of butter in it – you do NOT want the dough to be fully smooth. Refrigerate this dough for 20 minutes. Then on a floured surface, roll out the dough to be roughly 12 inches by 4 inches in size. Fold the dough brochure style (so in thirds), and rotate it 90 degrees. Freeze for another 30 minutes, and then repeat the rolling out, folding, and freezing steps one more time. Roll out the dough to be roughly 12 inches by 18 inches and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes, covered. On a floured surface, cut out 5 inch by 8 inch rectangles. Cut out 1 1/2 inch by 1 1/2 inch squares with any remaining pastry. Place the bigger pieces of pastry onto a lined sheet tray. Place a sheet of parchment/silpat on top of the pastry, as well as another sheet tray. On the top sheet tray, add more parchment and arrange the smaller squares on top. Brush the squares with beaten egg yolk. Bake at 375 degrees F for 25 minutes. Then remove the sheet tray and top layer of parchment. Brush the tops of the pastry with egg yolk and dust on top of that some powdered sugar. Then return to the oven for another 15 minutes, still at 375 degrees F. Allow the pastry to fully cool before attempting to use.

For the chocolate ganache:
1/2 cup milk
1 cup chocolate chips(highly recommend using Valrhona’s Azelia chocolate)
1/3 cup Nutella
a pinch of salt
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1g grated tonka bean
1/2 cup heavy cream

In a pot, heat up your milk, chocolate, Nutella, salt, butter, and tonka. Once everything is fully melted together, take the mixture off heat and stir in the heavy cream. Allow the ganache to cool in the refrigerator for 20 minutes before whipping until soft and spreadable. Transfer to a piping bag. Pipe the ganache onto the cooled down puff pastry rectangles and stack them to form your mille feuille.

For garnish:
Gold leaf

Garnish the top of the cake with squares of puff pastry and the gold leaf.