Napoleons

This week we made a recipe that we first tried around 30 years ago. It was in a cookbook I received as a teenager, and Wayne decided to make every single recipe in it. And he did! Some we had to gag down, but not this one! This is another recipe that you need to plan ahead for, and it takes a bit of time, but it's worth it.

Napoleons

1 cup butter

1 1/2 cups flour

1/2 cup sour cream

3 tablespoons sugar

1 tablespoon water

1 cup powdered sugar

1 tablespoon milk

1 square (1 ounce) semisweet chocolate, melted

1/2 recipe French Almond Custard or 1 cup vanilla pudding

Cut butter into flour with a pastry blender. With a fork, stir in sour cream until thoroughly blended. Divide the dough in half and wrap each in plastic wrap. Chill at least 8 hours.

Roll one half of the dough on a well-floured board into a 12x10 inch rectangle. Cut into 15 rectangles, each 4x2 inches. mix sugar and water and brush on the rectangles. Bake on an ungreased baking sheet for 15 minutes at 350° until light brown. Cool. Repeat with other half.

Mix powdered sugar and milk until smooth; spread on 10 on the rectangles. Drizzle chocolate on the frosted rectangles. Stack 3 rectangles together with 1 tablespoon of custard/pudding between each and a frosted one on top. Makes 10.

French Almond Custard

1/2 cup sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons cornstarch

2 cups light cream or milk

2 egg yolks

1 tablespoon butter or margarine

1 teaspoon almond extract

Mix sugar, salt and cornstarch in a saucepan. Gradually stir in the light cream. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture thickens and boils. Boil and stir one minutes. Remove from eat. Gradually stir about half the hot mixture into the egg yolks, then blend that mixture back into the saucepan. Boil and stir one more minute. Remove from heat. Stir in butter and almond extract. Chill before using to fill pastry. (This is delicious as a filling for cream puffs.) Makes 2 cups.

This time around I did make a couple of modifications, which included making only half of the pastry dough, and using a bit more flour because for some reason my Florida flour has more moisture in it so I need more in my baking. I then cut 2x2" squares instead of the larger rectangles; I wanted them to be a finger food. Because they were smaller, I baked them for 12 minutes instead of 15, and used a silicone mat so they didn't stick. I made a half recipe of the custard, but then only used half of that. Instead of making the frosting, I used some leftover frosting and ganache from the fridge. As you can probably tell, I'm not a very exact baker. Also, if you don't want to deal with making the pastry, you can definitely use frozen puff pastry, thawed and then baked, as the base.