Wild Raspberry Napoleon, Vanilla Bean Yogurt Custard & Filo Wafers.

I wanted to share with you one of our Summer adventures. While the last of the wild Summer berries were in fruit Ashley and I decided to do a little picking and make a napoleon from scratch.

Well a napoleon is basically layers of crisp flaky pastry, usually puff pastry, filled with custard cream. Also commonly referred to as  Mille-feuille. The addition of fruit, berries and spices comes down to your own poetic license.  Instead of frozen puff pastry we will make our puff pastry from layered Greek filo pastry, and as a twist we will make our custard or pastry cream aka "Crème Patisserie" with Greek yogurt.

plumb pickings



a handful of blackberries too

The season of berries being ripe enough to use, and getting to them before the bears and birds is short. As short as a week in some parts, but so worth the effort. Every berry plucked feels like a wee girft, left right there, just for you. Every berry is a moment of triumph!

hard @ work | watch out for bears Tommo!



         nothing like a free lunch

       not too sure about this one though!



ahhh Summer in the North Country




onto the filo

For the filo pastry wafers:

6 sheets filo pastry
1/2 cup unsalted butter
2 tbsp Honey

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/350F/Gas 4.
   
2. For the sweet filo layers, lay one of the pastry sheets out flat onto a work surface, brush with some of the melted butter and drizzal evenly with honey.
   
3.  Lay the other pastry sheet on top of the first one, and repeat the process until all layers are used up.(Keep the other sheets covered to prevent from drying out.)
   
4.  Cut the pastry layers into desired shapes, rectangles, square.... in our case we went with round by using a small Vegemite jar and cutting around it with a sharp knife. Brush the top of the pastry with more melted butter.Place shapes onto a baking sheet, grease proof paper or in our case Teflon mat. Place a second sheet on top and weigh down with a flat baking tray or ceramic cook ware. This will prevent from rising while keeping them crisp.
    
5. Bake in the oven for 10-15 minutes, or until golden-brown and crisp.
   
6. Gently use a small pastry knife to loosen the wafers with out cracking them. I always make a few extra  because I am always bound to loose a few at this stage.

For the Vanilla bean yogurt custard:

1 cup Milk
1/4 cup Sugar
1/3cup Flour (all purpose)
3 Egg yolks
Small pinch
Kosher salt
1 split vanilla pod or 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/4 cup Greek Yogurt

1. First step is to make a basic pastry cream. Line a small loaf pan with plastic wrap.

2. Whisk the milk, sugar, flour, salt egg yolks and split vanilla pod (if using) together in a large sauce pan. Bring to a boil whisking continuously until the mixture thickens. Continue cooking a further 2-3 minutes.

3. Remove from the heat. Remove the vanilla pod and scrape the seeds and add to the cream, discarding the remainder of the pod. Add the Vanilla extract if not using a vanilla pod here. Pour the pastry cream into the loaf pan. Smooth the surface with a spatula. Cover with plastic wrap, pushing directly against the surface of the cream to prevent a skin from forming.

4. Refrigerate for a couple of hours or until the cream is firm. (At this stage you could remove from the refrigerator and simply cut the pastry cream, coat it in bread crumbs and fry it, serve it as is or in our case loosen it up for piping)

5. Take 1 cup of the chilled pastry cream and whisk it together with the Greek yogurt. Transfer to a piping bag and return to the fridge until Napoleon construction.

For the coulis: