MELFI

I found the Chico 2 , the perfect mille feuille , but it's very expensive .

Let me show you why it's so good .

So this is a perforated puff pastry tray .

Now essentially , what it is is 2 trays that slot together , but they are set to a fixed height .

And that means that when you bake your puff pastry in it can only rise to the fixed height of the tray , so you get an even thickness and an even bake every single time .

Now I've shown you how to make puff pastry before , so I'm not gonna repeat that .

Just head to my website .

But I've got my homemade puff pastry , and I've lined my tray with a perforated silicone mat .

We place a second perforated mat on top and then we just slide the tray together .

We're gonna chill this in the freezer just for about 20 minutes .

Once it's chilled , we're gonna put it in the oven to bake .

It's gonna take about 75 minutes .

Now I would recommend putting a sheet of parchment on the bottom just to stop the butter from dripping all over the bottom of your oven .

We're gonna fill this with a delicious diplomat cream .

So I've got milk and vanilla , which is gonna bring it to a gentle simmer .

And in the meantime , we whisk together egg yolks , sugar , cornflour , and salt .

You only need to whisk it together for about 20 seconds .

Once that cream is hot , we're just gonna slowly pour it over those egg yolks , making sure we're just tempering it so it doesn't scramble .

Get it back into your pan .

We're gonna whisk it constantly until it starts to bubble .

Once it does bubble , continue to cook it for 1 minute .

It should be nice and thick .

We're gonna pass that mixture through a sieve .

And finally , we whisk through a little bit of cold butter .

Cover up and get it in the fridge to chill .

Now for me , a very important element to the taste here .

This is the raspberry cooling .

So we've got raspberry puree and frozen raspberries .

We're gonna gently heat that .

Once it's hot , we whisk in our sugar and pectin , and then just bring it to the boil .

And then off the heat , we stir in our gelatin .

Come on .

Get that into a tall jar .

We're gonna chill it in the fridge for an hour .

Once it's baked , we just slide back that top lid , and then we just peel back this perforated mat and have a look at that puff pastry .

It is so even .

Then we're gonna caramelize it just to add a little bit of color , a little bit of sweetness , so we dust an even layer of icing sugar all over the top .

We increase the oven temperature .

Just put it in very briefly .

Okay ?

Keep an eye on it because otherwise it's gonna burn .

Once that sugar has caramelized , you'll see the puff pastry has a nice shine on top .

We're gonna let that cool completely .

Look at that .

Wow .

Now we gotta finish that diplomat cream .

So I've got some whipped cream here .

This is just double heavy cream whipped to a medium stiff peak , and I've whisked up my creme patissiere just to loosen it .

We're gonna whisk these 2 together until we have a medium stiff peak to our diplomat cream .

Now to fill this , we're gonna do a little spiral piping motion with that diplomat cream .

And once you have piped it , the best little secret is to actually put it in the freezer for 30 minutes .

It will just stop it from collapsing when you go to assemble .

We fill it with the raspberry coulis , and then we stack it on top of each other .

It's ready to serve .

Now although this cost me £89 , it was worth every single penny .

And in my experience , I found it delivers much more consistent and superior results to the traditional weighted tray method .

When I've used that method before , I never knew how much weight to put on .

It would be uneven , slightly more cooked in one edge than the other .

This takes out all the guesswork and just delivers those consistent results every single time .

If you wanna recreate that recipe , just click the link in my bio .

I've also got the link for the tray in there so you can make a beautiful raspberry mille feuille every single