Buttery layers of homemade puff pastry nestled in pastry cream, what’s not to love. At first glance, the recipe for Torte Napoleon reads a little less simple than it actually is. I suggest reading through a couple of times before attempting, to familiarize yourself with it. I think you’ll love it too.

Enjoy.

Ingredients

750 mL whole milk
3 eggs
130 g granulated sugar
1 vanillin sugar pack (8g) or 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
50 g all-purpose flour
15 g cornstarch
70 g unsalted butter

Puff Pastry (Homemade)

400 g all-purpose flour
200 g unsalted butter almost frozen
200 g sour cream 20% fat, refrigerated/cold
1 egg refrigerated/cold
1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions

Cream Filling

In a large mixing bowl, whisk eggs, sugar and vanilla until combined. Add flour and cornstarch, combine and set aside.
In a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, warm milk. As soon as bubbles barely begin to form, reduce temperature to lowest setting. Do not allow milk to foam, otherwise start over.
In a slow, steady stream, add egg mixture to hot milk set over low heat, whisking continuously until mixture thickens. Remove from heat.
Once removed from heat, whisk in butter and combine. Set aside.

Puff Pastry

Before beginning place butter in freezer and bring to almost frozen.
In a large mixing bowl, combine flour and salt.
Bring butter out from freezer, unwrap it leaving a piece of its wrapper on for holding the butter versus directly in your hand (to avoid melting). Large grate butter directly into flour bowl, dipping block of butter in flour several times as you go so that it doesn't stick to the grater.
Add cold egg and cold sour cream to crumbled butter and flour.
Quickly knead dough, but do not knead long, just enough to combine.
Divide dough into 12 equal parts, roughly 80 g each. Place on large plate, cover with cellophane and refrigerate for 1 hour.

Baking and Layering

After 1 hour, remove 1 dough piece from refrigerator, place on lightly floured parchment paper, sprinkle dough and rolling pin with flour and roll out to a disk roughly 16cm diameter (smaller the diameter for taller cake).
Bake in 200C/400F preheated oven for 8 minutes.
While one pastry disk bakes, take out next dough piece from refrigerator and repeat above steps.
When pastry bakes it will not bake in a perfect circle. Using a springform pan or round plate, cut circled layer, saving leftover edges for topping.
Repeat all steps until all dough is baked. Once all pastry disks are baked, begin to layer cake on plate you will use to serve (tricky to transfer, so I find it simpler this way). Start layers with cream on plate so pastry won't slide.
Once all layers are covered with pastry cream, cream top and sides too.
Crumble pastry edges set aside by pulsing a little in mixer or using a rolling pin, then sprinkle all torte with this, top and sides.
Cover with cling wrap/food wrap making sure to touch wrap to torte. Refrigerate for 6 hours or overnight. For a softer texture, overnight is best.
After cooling overnight, carefully remove cling wrap. Decorate as you wish and serve chilled.

Notes

If using store-bought puff pastry versus homemade, you’ll need enough to make 12 circles, each approximately 16cm for this taller torte.

Best to avoid over-handling dough as you go.

All ingredients for puff pastry must be very chilled, butter almost frozen, the entire time you prepare. You should work quickly to avoid warming, otherwise the dough will not turn out the buttery thin layers typical of puff pastry but instead result in one thick piece, which does not work well for this recipe.

12 Layer Torte Napoleon