Burnt Vanilla Yoghurt Mille-Feuille

by Cassie | Oct 15, 2020 | 0 comments

This burnt vanilla mille-feuille is my lightened up version of the French classic! 

There are three main components to this delicate little dessert; The pastry layers, burnt vanilla and the super creamy and thick new Nutriday double cream yoghurt. The yoghurt is super special and is a real treat for breakfast as it tastes like pudding! It’s also one of my favourite things to add to desserts. In order to turn it into a quick and easy filling, I made what is traditionally called ‘Labneh’. It’s a process of straining the yoghurt through muslin cloth to remove most of the whey, which results in a thicker, pipeable consistency. Not only is it seriously easy to make, but it is also a far lighter replacement for the traditional mille-feuille (pronounced meel-foy) filling of custard. 

Burnt vanilla powder is my secret way of making sure that every part of the (very expensive) vanilla bean is used – I first scrape the seeds from the vanilla bean and use these in panna cotta, ice cream etc, then I steep the vanilla bean in vodka for a few weeks to make my own extract. After that I place the vanilla bean in a jar of sugar, and finally, I toast it and grind it to make burnt vanilla powder. FOUR uses from one vanilla bean. If you don’t have vanilla beans, then you can use the new Nutriday vanilla flavoured yoghurt which has tiny little black specks of vanilla seeds in it which I just adore. I totally would’ve used that if it had launched before I shot this post! 

Lastly, we get to the pastry. Traditionally, mille-feuille is made from puff pastry and as delicious as puff pastry is, I secretly really don’t like it in mille-feuille. I like my desserts to crumble into submission when I put my fork through them and puff pastry just doesn’t do that for me (although I have a mille-feuille in my cookbook with a clever puff pastry trick that DOES!) So, in order to make this mille-feuille absolutely melt in the mouth, I’ve used phyllo pastry which has been brushed with melted butter and icing sugar. This is a great make-ahead dessert (all the elements can be made ahead of time and then just assembled on the day) and just perfect for the warmer weather. In fact, it would probably make a perfectly acceptable breakfast, too! Happy baking!