Secrets to French Napoleons

Napoleons are made of layers of flaky puff pastry filled with rich pastry cream, cut into small rectangles, and topped with chocolate and vanilla icings. It may look complicated, but its two main componentspuff pastry and pastry creamare actually quite basic.

But there is one major difference with the way the puff pastry is treated for Napoleons as opposed to other pastries: Its weighted down as it bakes. This prevents the pastry from rising too muchyou want the layers that make up each slice to be flat and dense, not puffy and domed. The best way to do this is to place a second sheet pan over the pastry and then put a large ovenproof baking dish on top. This keeps it condensed, providing you with flat sheets to use when building your impressive, three-layer sweet.

PREPARING THE PASTRY

1. Roll the puff pastry into a 16 by 12-inch rectangle, about inch thick, between 2 sheets of parchment paper. Remove the top sheet of parchment and prick the pastry with a fork every 2 inches.

2. Replace the top sheet of parchment and slide the dough onto a rimmed baking sheet. Place a second rimmed baking sheet on top of the dough and weight the baking sheet down with a large ovenproof dish. Bake the pastry as directed, rotating the baking sheet halfway through baking, and removing the weight, the top baking sheet, and top sheet of parchment for the final 5 to 10 minutes.

3. Cut the cooled pastry lengthwise in half with a serrated knife and trim the edges as necessary to make them straight. Cut each pastry half crosswise into 3 rectangles.

4. Cut each rectangle crosswise into 3 small rectangles (you will have a total of 18 rectangles). Each Napoleon will contain 3 rectangles of pastry stacked on top of one another, with pastry cream spread between the layers.

GLAZING AND ASSEMBLING

1. Spread the chocolate glaze evenly over the top of 6 rectangles of pastry and lay them on a wire rack set over a sheet of parchment paper (for easy cleanup). Drizzle a thin stream of the vanilla glaze crosswise over the chocolate glaze. Run the tip of a small knife or toothpick lengthwise through the icing to make a design. Let the icing set, about 20 minutes.

2. After layering the remaining rectangles of pastry with the pastry cream to make 6 individual portions, top each portion with a glazed pastry rectangle and serve.

Find this and other great recipes in The Americas Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

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Secrets to Fig Bars

Fresh figs are hard to find year-round, but our hankering for fig bars isnt limited to certain months (or satisfied by overly cakey Fig Newtons). Fortunately for usand our cravingsdried figs baked up just as well as fresh in our bars, as long as they got a quick pre-treatment. Simply pureeing sweet, thin-skinned Turkish and Calimyrna figs made for terribly dry bars, so we rehydrated them first. Water did little for the flavor and orange juice and wine were both too acidic, but apple juice gave us a slight sweetness and subtle flavor boost that highlighted all that the figs had to offer.

MAKING FIG BARS

1. After mixing the dough and spreading most of it inside a pan lined with a greased foil sling, top it with a piece of greased parchment paper and smooth the crust into an even layer with the bottom of a measuring cup. Remove the parchment before parbaking the crust. Meanwhile, roll out the remaining dough (used for the top crust) between 2 sheets of greased parchment paper into an 8-inch square and stash it in the freezer until the last step.

2. Spread the fig filling into an even layer over the baked crust.

3. Remove the top crust from the freezer, unwrap, and lay on top of the filling. Press lightly on the dough to adhere. Finish baking.

Find this and other great recipes in The Americas Test Kitchen Family Baking Book.

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