Gateau Napoleon

Recently I have been watching Poh's Kitchen programs on TV and she has this guest chef whom I find very interesting to watch. He is a french patissier who has been living in Australia for a while now. His name is Emmanuel Mollois. His accent is very strong and he has a sense of humour too. But more importantly, the things he bakes and cooks really look scrumptious.

When he made this Gateau Napoleon, my sister said "You have to make this!" and so I did. I followed his recipe which I got from Poh's kitchen website. My gateau didn't look as good as his though. It was a little wonky. He said that this is the traditional version of the vanilla slice that you get today.

First the pastry which was made of butter, flour, egg, salt and cream mixed together and formed into a dough. Then divided into 7 balls and chilled for 2 hours. Then each ball is rolled into thin discs and baked at 230˚C for 10minutes. It was interesting to watch each disc rise so high in the oven. It didn't take long for each disc to bake in the oven but because I baked them one at a time, it took a while to finish all 7 of them.

Dough divided into 7 balls

Crispy layers

 Each of my pastry was a little different in size. Even though I weighted the dough when I divided it, I guess some I rolled slightly thinner than others.

 I am not sure if I was suppose to flatten the pastry before stacking them with pastry cream or leave them tall. Anyway, I left them tall. 

Then I prepared the creme patisserie which was to be filled in between each pastry and stacked them up tall. I only used 6 of the disc for stacking and the last one was crushed up to be used a topping for the outer layer. 

I should have used 2 for the topping because I didnt have enough to cover the whole gateau. The end result was a wonky and rustic gateau napoleon. 

My wonky gateau napoleon

Verdict of the gateau napoleon, everyone said not enough creme patisserie and too much pastry. I think so too. The taste was good but there are a few adjustments that I need to remember to fix for the next time. First of all,definitely more creme patisserie. Secondly, I think the pastry needs to be flipped and baked for a little longer to get the whole thing crispy because the bottom part of my pastry seemed a little soft. Thirdly more crumbs for the outer layer. I know I will try this recipe again and hopefully it will be nicer the next round. 

The layers inside