By the Batch – Strawberry Napoleons

I’m finding fresh produce to be very expensive this winter. With a one year old who loves his fruits and veggies we’re spending a fortune at the grocery store every week so I’ve started basing my purchases on what’s on sale. A few weeks ago our local store had three cartons of strawberries on for $5 so I jumped all over that. I sliced up a bunch and froze them and I made a huge batch of Toddler Smoothies but I still had a ton of strawberries leftover. Chris loves strawberry desserts so I did a quick Pinterest search and found an Easy Strawberry Napoleon Recipe from Six Sisters’ Stuff. We had puffed pastry in the freezer leftover from when Chris made Beef Wellington so I gave it a try. Turns out it actually was really easy and Chris loved them! I’ve altered the directions mostly based on the fact that my pastry was the type you roll out.

Ingredients

• 1 roll (half of a 450 gram package) frozen puff pastry
• 1 box instant vanilla pudding mix
• 1 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 cup Cool Whip
• 2 cups hulled and sliced strawberries
• Icing sugar, for garnish

Directions

• Heat oven to 400 degrees. Thaw pastry according to directions on the box - I left mine in the refrigerator over night. Roll out pastry until you have a rectangle that’s about 1/8 of an inch thick. Make two cuts across the long part of the rectangle so you have three equally sized strips. Then cut each of those strips in half on the short part. Space the 6 resulting pieces on a baking sheet. Bake on the middle rack for 15 minutes or until golden. Place on a rack to cool.
• Meanwhile, in a bowl, whisk pudding mix, milk, and extract for 2 minutes; fold in Cool Whip and blend thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate.
• Carefully split each piece of pastry in half horizontally. Cover bottom halves with pudding mixture and then sliced strawberries, dividing equally. Cover with pastry tops. Dust with icing sugar.

I don’t like strawberries – weird I know – but Chris loved these. I loved that they were incredibly easy to make and the only thing I had to buy was almond extract. I would definitely make these again but will wait until we’re having people over for dinner as the pastry got very soggy before Chris could get through the whole batch on his own.