Millefeuille of caramelised pancakes with Catalan cream

This dessert is full of color and incredible flavors that catch you and make you go back to the kitchen for more. Its presentation is amazing and the flavor takes you to heaven. This recipe comes from 2 traditional recipes from our mothers and grandmothers to evolve into an idea that has been a success. A fusion between 2 traditional cuisines, Galician and Catalan.

In our dessert recipes they could not miss, this  tart of pancakes or strudel can be filled with many types of creams, chocolate, compotes, jams, honey, etc. in the end it doesn’t stop being like a sweet lasagna . Especially the Catalan cream goes with pearls, and it does not fall as heavy as when you add chocolate. It is a dessert with pancakes that remains smooth with a lot of milk flavor, aroma of vanilla, citrus and cinnamon. I hope you like it and enjoy it at a dinner or lunch with your friends or family. A dessert of ten points, I assure you.

Preparation of the pancakes

1. The paste-cream is quite easy to prepare. In a bowl we pour the milk, the flour, a pinch of salt, the eggs and the zest of a lemon. Mix everything with the mixer without lumps. Let it rest for an hour so that it finishes thickening due to the action of the flour, although the cream must be loose.
2. In a hot frying pan (very important that it is non-stick), sprinkle with a few drops of olive oil.
3. When it is hot, add the pasta so that it covers the entire bottom, only just enough, so that they are fine.
4. We have it on high heat for about 10 seconds and turn it over with a fork. If the fork is not good for you, you can use the trick of turning the pan with a plate as if it were a potato omelette. As you get more practical, it will no longer be necessary. Every time we take a pancake out of the pan we must add a few drops of oil again.
5. We are removing them on a plate. We reserve.
6. We cut into rectangular sheets as if they were lasagna plates and reserve on a plate for final assembly. 2 sheets come out of each pancake.

Preparation of Catalan cream

1. The first step is to prepare the ingredients with which we are going to flavor the milk. We wash the lemon and orange very well and peel their skin finely, without much white that then makes the dessert bitter. We open the vanilla bean and remove the seeds that we will reserve to add later to the milk.
2. We heat the milk over medium heat almost to the boiling point. We lower the temperature and remove from the heat, add the vanilla seeds, the skin of the orange and the lemon, and finally the cinnamon stick. We leave everything to rest for 5 minutes while we beat the eggs.
3. We separate the whites from the yolks and put them in a bowl with the sugar (250 g). We beat vigorously with an electric mixer or some rods until we achieve a foamy mixture.
4. Add to the bowl containing the egg cream and sugar the fine cornmeal, so that it mixes better we can help ourselves with a little of the hot milk from step 2. We beat everything very well.
5. Heat the milk again at medium temperature for 10 minutes with the vanilla, the lemon-orange peel and the cinnamon. After cooking we pass through a strainer to remove impurities.
6. We put the casserole with the milk over low heat, add the mixture of egg cream, sugar and flour. We continuously remove with a wooden spoon or some rods (I just bought some silicone ones that are great) without lumps and taking care that it never boils. When it begins to thicken, remove from the heat and continue to move for one more minute. Keep in mind that although the cream is a little liquid it will thicken when it cools. We reserve to fill the strudel.

Final assembly of the strudel of pancakes and Catalan cream

1. We already have the rectangular pancake sheets and the warm Catalan cream. Heat the sheets of pancake in the micro for 2 minutes. The assembly is very simple and we must prepare it just before presenting the plate so that it is warm.
2. Now we are going to assemble the strudel as if it were a lasagna. First we put on a plate a layer of pancake fixed to the plate with a little caramel (we do it in situ with a little caramelized sugar with the torch) on the pancake sheet we pour a layer of Catalan cream about 1 cm thick, We cover again with another pancake sheet and repeat until we have 3 or 4 floors. The last floor will be smeared with a thin layer of Catalan cream.
3. Sprinkle the strudel with sugar and burn with a kitchen torch before serving.

I hope you like it, 100% yummy dessert.