Blog

Mar 10, 2023

Gary Townsend recipe: Chocolate & hazelnut mille feuille

A slightly challenging recipe this week for those who want to impress at

A slightly challenging recipe this week for those who want to impress at home.

Mille feuille means "thousand sheets" in French. It is a classic dessert made up of three layers of puff pastry with a cream filling. Here I have a made a chocolate filling with hazelnuts which is a chocoholics dream!

4 servings

Ingredients

Method

Pre heat oven Gas mark 7/ 220c/ fan 200c

To begin bring the milk and cream to the boil in a medium sized pan. Whisk the egg yolks and sugar together until pale in a mixing bowl and pour over the boiling milk and cream mixture and whisk together. Melt the chocolate slightly in the microwave or over a pan of simmering water. Return the milk and egg mixture to the pan and cook on a low heat whisking continuously until the mixture begins to thicken. Strain through a fine sieve, add the softened gelatine sheet along with the melted chocolate. Thoroughly whisk all this together and allow to cool and set in the fridge – around 2-3 hours.

For the puff pastry part you will need two baking trays similar in size. Line one tray with greaseproof paper.

If your pastry is ready rolled sieve over a small amount of icing sugar and lay onto the baking tray so it fits to size. Next cover with another sheet of greaseproof paper then place the other baking tray on top so the puff pastry is sandwiched between the trays. Cook this for around 12 minutes then check. Continue to cook for 5 minute intervals until the entire sheet is golden brown. Once cooked allow to cool on a cooling rack.

When it comes to building the mille feuille cut your pastry into even sizes approx. 9cm x 3cm.

Whisk up the chocolate mix and place it into a piping bag.

Place a small dab of the chocolate onto the bottom of the plate to secure the first layer of pastry and then pipe on the chocolate repeating the layers with a small amount of hazelnuts in between as you go.

Serve with your favourite ice cream

Gary Townsend is head chef at One Devonshire Gardens by Hotel du Vin, Glasgow. See www.hotelduvin.com or phone 0141 378 0385 to book.

Twitter @Chefgtownsend

Instagram- @chef.g.townsend

It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.

heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.

We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.

We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.

That is invaluable.

We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.

In the past, the journalist's job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com

Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.

Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.