Daring Bakers: Vols-au-Vent with Homemade Puff Pastry

The September 2009 Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Steph of A Whisk and a Spoon. She chose the French treat, Vols-au-Vent based on the Puff Pastry recipe by Michel Richard from the cookbook Baking With Julia by Dorie Greenspan.

I was excited yet nervous about my first Daring Baker's challenge. Puff pastry was one of those things I thought only insane people make at home. But I was wrong. It's not hard to make - it's only time-consuming. Honestly, the dough for TWD's Apple Turnovers was trickier than this. The only thing that we weren't fans of was this:

Four sticks of butter? But, totally worth it. I formed one third of the dough into vols-au-vent. I think I didn't press the top and bottom parts together enough, because they sort of fell apart. When they came out of the oven, I pressed them together again. I was able to make them all look normal except for one (as you can see in the first pictures). I was able to get five out of one third of the dough, though I had to re-roll a bit. I filled them with the Chocolate Pastry Cream from Baking from My Home to Yours.

Yum! They were so good! Flaky, buttery, and chocolatey - what's not to love?

With the extra pastry cream I made a pie using a frozen pie crust I had. Yum!

All in all, puff pastry really isn't that challenging. I recommend making it, if you want a fun and delicious project. You can find the recipe here. You can also watch this video of Julia Child and Michel Richard making puff pastry, although they don't go on to make vols-au-vent. I recommend watching this video if you plan on making the recipe. Have fun!