Puff Pastry Heaven

Today is a very good day.  You might be wondering why.  Well, I'll tell ya :)  Today, the Puff Pastry God smiled down upon me and graced me with beautiful layers of buttery yummy goodness!  This was my second attempt at making puff pastry from scratch, and I'm happy to say that it was a success!  Let me tell you...that first time I made puff pastry...it was not a very pretty sight.  I mean, I don't know why I felt compelled to make the whole batch...It just didn't occur to me to halve the recipe so that it would have been a whooole lot easier to work with (and a whooole lot less butter wasted!) > : (

I can still remember when I first made puff pastry.  I could seriously understand why I've heard a lot of people say that they don't spend the time making their own and would rather just buy the pre-made sheets.  Granted, those sheets from the grocery stores are a lot easier to handle and saves the baker a lot of time and aggravation, but they cannot compare to the taste of home-made puff pastry!  Mmmm....buttery goodness.....oops, I'm digressing...back to my first trial.  It was ugly.  Seriously, really ugly.  First of all, I totally do not have the counter space to be rolling out such a large batch of puff pastry.  Secondly, with the first rolling movement, two pounds of butter (yes, I said pounds) squirted out everywhere! And with every movement, the butter just kept right on leaking out =( And it wasn't as if I only had to roll it out once...no, unfortunately, I had to roll it, fold it into a book shape, and then refrigerate for about 20 minutes, four times!! And yes, each of those four times that I re-rolled it, the butter squished out everywhere!  It was a disaster!! And to top it all off, it was my homework assignment for the week and I had to bring my failure into class so that the chef could bake it and see what a horrible puff pastry maker I was...waaah! =(  It was shameful...and here I thought I was a better baker than cook...*shakes head*...tsk, tsk, tsk...

It was at this point that I decided, yes, I, too, will just have to make do with store-bought puff pastry! I just kept thinking of all that wasted butter (2 pounds +)!  It wasn't until last week in class, we made a French apple tart brulee, using puff pastry, that I decided I shall attempt puff pastry again....yes, that French apple tart brulee was that good! This time, however, I was much smarter!  *smirk*  I halved the recipe (and still ended up with plenty of puff pastry!), and it made rolling the buttery dough sooo much easier!  Take that Puff Pastry! HA!  The butter didn't squish out as badly as the first attempt, but squish out it still did!  I didn't sweat it though...it was already looking a lot better than before! =)  For the ultimate test, I was going to make those apple tarts again, but decided to do custard with strawberries instead.  I cut the puff pastry into scalloped circles and created a little pocket for the custard.  It was mmm mmm good!  I am a very happy woman today!

Just look at all those lovely buttery golden layers of yummy goodness!! 

And the best part of all?  I have five of these lil tart yummies waiting to be eaten =D  And more puff pastry in the freezer!  I'm a very happy woman, indeed!