Our thanks and congratulations go to Tasha Stones, much loved semi-finalist in The Great British Baking Show ™ 2023, for the concept behind this recipe.
The Story ...
Understandably, recipes that are contributed by the bakers as part of The Great British Baking Show ™ are not generally shared with the public. We're left wondering how to reproduce their wonderful dishes. This recipe is my best effort to re-create the patisserie offering for Tasha's showstopper in the semi-finals. She called it a Mango and Mojito Millefoglie.
Some details ...
There are so many options for the two fillings (one was mango and the other was Mojito). Tasha might have used Crème Patisserie, or Crème Diplomat, or American buttercream, or Italian Meringue ... In my re-creation, I wanted something stable that would take the flavors but still be firm enough to support the four tiers. I was reluctant to use gelatin. In the end, I opted for a Swiss Meringue Buttercream, but I didn't feel that the high level of butter in traditional buttercream was un-necessary and I halved the normal amount.
Tasha used her vast skills to make inverted puff pastry. You can read about this here. I wanted to put my efforts into making the best possible flavor and I decided to make normal puff pastry.
I felt that the mango cream was fairly simple, but I scratched my head a lot about what to use for the Mojito cream. I wanted to use white rum and in the end I liked the idea of white coconut rum. I experimented with lime zest (got lost in the taste testing) and with lime juice (made the cream too wet) and in the end I used a mixture of yuzu juice and lime juice, which I combined and then boiled with the rum to evaporate the alcohol and condensed the citrus. It left a lovely kick. Finally, I needed to decided about the mint. I experimented with larger and larger bunches of fresh mint, but the citrus and coconut hid the mint. In a wild gesture I added mint sauce with its underlying acid and it was perfect.
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