Murphy’s Law: Layer after Layer.

Our far from perfect Mille Feuille

After reading Pierre Hermé’s Chocolate book, I wanted to go out and buy a kilo of chocolate to make something from the book, but fear of failure stopped me from doing so. (It was way past midnight and no one would have sold me chocolate anyway). My next battle plan was to recruit someone to bake with me, that way, I would have someone to chit chat with in the kitchen and I would have more courage to try something since there would be strength in numbers. And so there were two. N and I set out to make something from the Chocolate book, our selected project was: The Mille Feuille.

Layer 1: We made a shopping list but failed to co-ordinate between us, and so when we met at the supermarket, we realized that N had half the ingredients at her home, but no oven and I had vice versa, and so, it was senseless purchasing everything again. Attempt one, failed.

Layer 2: On our second scheduleded attempt time, we were slightly more organized with the ingredients, we were ready to take this project on. However, for some obscure reason, when N woke up, there wasn't any running water in the house, and so she was delayed indefinitely till the Public Utilities Board people came back to fix what they fiddled with.

Layer 3: Attempting to make the inside-out puff pastry instead of simply buying store bought pastry was a nightmare. It was at this point that I realized I am who I am, and I am not the Picasso of Pastry Mr. Pierre Hermé. Hence after investing nearly 5 hours, realizing we had about another 4 or 5 to go and only about 5 hours to midnight, we decided to abandon ship, and use store bough puff pastry.

Layer 4: Once we had our puff pastry nicely rolled out, bits of it got burnt while baking.

Layer 5: Now that it is midnight and we had finally assembled the Mille Feuille, it is time to eat. (Yay!) After two bites, it was too rich for me to eat anymore of it and I was starting to feel a little ill from the rich cream.

Ok. I admit defeat, but at least I didn’t go down without a fight. Future dates with Pierre Hermé are still pending till I have fully recovered from the puff pastry trauma.