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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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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Plum Danishes

This morning I woke up and wanted cherry danishes but it was too cold outside for me to consider the journey to the bakery. I would’ve made cherry danishes, but I had no cherries. So I made plum danishes. They were really good.

No, but seriously, they were really good.

Finished vanilla-plum danishes dusted with icing sugar

I have an urge for danishes pretty often but eat danishes quite rarely. Why? I HAVE NO IDEA. Probably because laminated dough is scary (edit: apparently not anymore). For those who are new to laminated dough, it’s basically dough with lots of layers like puff pastry, and it’s supposed to be hard to make. Most food blogs around the internet these days will tell you it’s easy to make laminated dough. “It’s easy,” they say (while laughing manically behind their computer screens), “you should try it.”

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