Maple Mille Feuille

For a while, whenever anyone asked me what I blogged about, I would explain that I was a Canadian food blogger who cooked everything with a lot of maple syrup. It was supposed to be a joke (a bad one, but still).

Maple mille feuille with homemade puff pastry, maple pastry cream, and whipped cream. Make your own--click to get the recipe!

Some people thought I was serious though and became confused when they saw that not all of my recipes had maple syrup in them. I ended up taking down any maple syrup references a few weeks ago.

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Pear Tart

I was in the grocery store a few days ago, shopping for wasabi, when I saw some pears. Boy, did they look good. They were firm, yet delicate. And, for some reason, they looked like they would be really juicy.

French pear tart with almond frangipane and Bosc pears. Click to get the AMAZING recipe!

I didn’t buy them though. I bet you thought I bought them. No. I did not buy them. They were organic. I bought the one’s right next to them, for half the price and double the size, and then I made this wonderful tart.

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Tutorial: French Croissants

Croissants aren’t bread rolls; they’re more than half butter. Croissants, with their 70+ rich and flaky layers, are a must-try item in any French bakery. Regardless, few bakeries can beat a homemade croissant. Even if cutting your croissant doesn’t reveal a cross section with a perfect honeycomb of layers, the buttery treat is sure to impress even the pickiest of eaters.

EDIT (April 1st, 2013): I originally wrote this croissant tutorial on August 13, 2012 and wasn’t completely satisfied with the results. The croissants were delicious, sure, but they weren’t perfect. The pictures were pretty embarrassing as well since the batch came out flat due to improper lamination. I also recently realized that the croissant history I shared was not accurate. My post on French croissants was actually about German croissants. Sigh. I’ve spent a while working on this recipe to significantly improve it, and that’s what this updated post now contains.

If you want to kick your croissants up a notch, you can also check out my Ispahan croissant post with instructions for raspberry, rose, and lychee croissants. You can find it here.

Homemade, fresh, and fluffy croissants

Croissants are made with a yeast-leavened dough that is folded with butter in a process called “lamination”. While baking, the layers of butter give off steam and cause the layers of dough to separate, leaving large gaps. The quality of a croissant can be determined by studying the size of the gaps, since large gaps are a result of proper lamination.

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