Vol-au-vents.

The magic of puff pastry. Day 1 consisted entirely of making the traditional/German puff pastry followed by the French/inverted puff pastry.  4 hours of kneading, rolling, folding, resting and chilling 145 layers of pastry and 144 layers of fat. Yum. First item on the list were the vol-au-vents. These cute little French pastries were coated with an egg glaze and sent off for baking at 380 deg F after 30 minutes of rest time.

Making the perfect vol-au-vent is a test of how good your puff pastry skills are!  The risen pastry will show whether the individual dough and butter layers were formed properly during the process, or whether they were all smushed together into one big lump..

And tada! Not too bad for a first attempt I think.  A couple weren't set straight with the base, but at least you can see the individual puff pastry layers.. And the lids are so cute.  

Now, for the perfect filling................