linda 12 October 2009 Dessert Recipes, Recipes 25 Comments  Print This Post  Email This Post

If I told you that I made my own puff pastry would you believe me? Don’t worry, I couldn’t believe it myself either. September’s Daring Baker’s Challenge was Vols-Au-vent, therefore, we were given the mission of making puff pastry from scratch, presenting it in the form of Vols au Vent. Imagine my surprise when after 3 hours of kneading, rolling and refrigerating, I came up with something that looked remotely similar to puff pastry, not only that, but it rose beautifully, not only that, but it actually tasted awesome. Pat on the back.

I think that’s enough gloating for the post, now on to the more important stuff. Ever since my obsession with baking started, 2 years ago I think, I’ve been mildly stalking Pierre Herme. Not stalking stalking, just googling “Pierre Herme” every day, hoping to find results of any new creations which has been unleashed. Living in Australia, us Aussies have been greatly deprived of such artistic and experimental creations, for me, I find solace in the likes of google and Flickr. Through my “research” I found out that there was one word which was synonymous with Pierre Herme, Ispahan. According to Chocolate & zucchini, Ispahan is a flavour combination created by the man himself, an infamous combination of Lychee, Raspberries and Rose.

Intrigued by those flavours, I was keen to make something of it. With my left over puff pastry, roses, a tin of lychee and raspberries, I decided to give the Millefeuille a go, with such great ingredients, what can go wrong?

Ispahan Millefeuille recipe

Ingredients

Puff Pastry

• 1 sheet of frozen puff pastry
• 1 beaten egg

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees celsius
2. Using a round cookie cutter, cut out pieces of circles from the sheet of puff pastry, painting the surface of each with the egg wash.
3. Place puff pastry pieces on a baking tray. Cover the top of the pastry with a piece of baking paper, to ensure that the pastry rise evenly.
4. Bake pastry in the oven for 5 minutes, once the pastry has half risen, place a baking tray over the puff pastry and return to oven. This ensures that the pastry stops rising. Reduce the temperature of the oven to 180 degrees celsius, continue baking until golden brown (~10 to 15 mins, depending on your oven).
5. Once pastry has been baked, remove and allow to cool.

Raspberry jelly

Ingredients

• 150gm raspberry
• 3 tablespoon of sugar
• 50ml water
• 1/2 tablespoon of powdered gelatine

1. Heat the raspberry, water and sugar in a pot. Once it boils, turn off the heat.
2. Using a stick blender, puree the mixture, then pour through a sieve.
3. Prepare the gelatine powder as per instruction, then add to the raspberry syrup.
4. Pour mixture into a container and allow to cool.

Lychee Mousse

• 2 egg whites
• 85 gm sugar
• 25 gm water
• 10gm glucose
• 130gm thickened cream
• 130gm Lychee puree
• 20gm powdered sugar (caster sugar)
• 1/2 tablespoon gelatine powder

The lychee mousse was adapted from Bombini

1. Warm puree and sugar on a bain marie to 50 degrees celsius.
2. Incorporate the pre-prepared gelatine powder into the warm mixture.
3. Cool the mixture in an ice bath, until it’s evenly gelatinous
4. Prepare Italian meringue with egg whites, sugar, water and glucose. Cook sugar to 120 degrees celsius.
5. Fold in 25% of meringue into the lychee mixture, then remaining meringue.
6. Fold 100% whipped cream into the meringue mixture.

White chocolate rose

• 100gm of white chocolate
• Rose petals
• Over-head projector papers

For me the most difficult part of this creation was finding rose petals. Our mission to locate rose petals went something like this. We started out at 5pm, just as the sun starts to set, we’re slowly driving down neighbouring roads, looking to see who has the best looking bunch of rose. Just as we thought that our journey would end in disappointment, out of the blue we spotted our target. My boyfriend would stop right in front of the rose bush, I quickly jumped out of the car, grabbed the rose and ran back to the car, then he quickly sped off, leaving nothing but remnants of our tyres on the road. I’m proud to announce that even without much sunlight, my eyes served me right, we actually got a very beautiful deep dark red rose. The things we do for our creations.

For the white chocolate rose:

1. Remove petals from the rose, wash under cool water and dry with paper towel. Place clean petals between two pieces of cling wrap, and place under a heavy book, I chose the yellow pages.
2. Using the same cookie cutter for the puff pastry, trace the circle on the over-head projector paper. Then cut out the circle.
3. Remove petals from the yellow pages, using a sugar/water syrup, paste the petals on the circles.
4. Heat the white chocolate in a bowl in the microwave, until just melted. Using a spatula, evenly spread a thin layer of white chocolate over the rose petal on to the circle plastic. Ensure that the surface is all covered. Allow to cool.

Assembling the Millefeuille

1. Place a round piece of puff pastry on the bottom layer
2. Top it with an equally round piece of raspberry jelly.
3. Pipe the lychee mousse over the surface of the raspberry jelly.
4. Repeat steps 1-3 again.
5. Remove the overhead projector from the rose petal white chocolate, then place atop the lychee mousse.

After 2 hours of baking, I was done. The best part of the whole process was digging in to the millefeuille, the contrasting texture of crispy flaky puff pastry, jellied raspberry, soft airy mousse and the solid white chocolate was a great combination. The flavours from buttery, slightly sour to creamy and sweet also proved popular with the taste bud.

Without tasting any of his creations, I can now not only admire Pierre Herme’s masterpieces, but also appreciate the reason as to why this flavour combination is a best seller since its introduction.