Vanilla Mille-Feuille: The Classic Layered French Pastry

Mille-feuille is three layers of crisp puff pastry with vanilla pastry cream between them, topped with icing. A guide to how it is made and how to cut it.

A vanilla mille-feuille is a rectangle of three thin, crisp sheets of puff pastry layered with vanilla pastry cream and finished with icing or powdered sugar. The name means a thousand leaves, after the many buttery layers in the pastry. It is one of the most recognisable cakes in any French-style patisserie.

A short history

Layered puff pastry desserts appear in French cookbooks from the seventeenth century, and the modern form was popularised in nineteenth-century Paris. Like many French pastries, it spread across the Mediterranean through cities with French-trained bakers, and became a standard in the patisseries of Alexandria.

How it is built

Puff pastry is made by folding butter into dough again and again until there are hundreds of layers. For mille-feuille the sheets are baked flat, often pressed under a tray so they rise evenly and stay crisp. The cream is a thick vanilla crème pâtissière, sometimes lightened with whipped cream. The top is usually white fondant, often feathered with lines of chocolate.

How to cut it without crushing it

Mille-feuille is famously hard to slice. Use a serrated knife and saw gently through the top layer first, then press down through the rest. Chilling it briefly helps. Many people simply turn a piece on its side and eat it layer by layer, which is perfectly acceptable.

Shatter, then cream, then shatter again.

The Délices variation

At Délices the version people know best is our pistachio mille-feuille, the same idea with a pistachio cream. If you prefer the classic vanilla, ask us; the counter changes with the day.

Ask Délices

We bake by the season, so call us to ask what's on the counter today, or to plan mille-feuille for an occasion: +20 3 486 1432. You'll find us at 46 Saad Zaghloul Street, Raml Station, open daily 8 AM – 1 AM.