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| Our Tompoes of today |
And I like it way too much.
I'd probably really skinny if I'd skip the baking hobby.
And today, restday, we (Dennis and I) made Tompoes.
Dennis told me he'd once a week go to the HEMA with his pocket money (the money he got from his mum to buy school-milk every day) to buy a Tompoes.
Tompoes means Tom-cat it is, literary translated. A known comic character, Tom Puss (Tom Poes in Dutch) is even named after the pastry.
The pastry looks a little like the French mille-feulle but is far tastier to my opinion.
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| Tom Poes and Heer Bommel |
They say the Tompoes has been made first by a bakery/patisserie in Amsterdam. The baker was inspired by the figure of General Tom Thumb.
A little man (Charles Sherwoon Stratton) was one of the big attractions from the American circus of Phineas Taylor Barnum. In 1844 and 1845 the circus traveled through the Netherlands. A couple years later a Frysian little man traveled around as well, inspired by Charles. The little man called himself 'Admiraal Tom Pouce' > General Tom Thumb.
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| Advertisement of General Tom Pouce on tour |
Both Tom Thumb and Tom Pouce refer to the same fairytale figure.
The French version mille-feulle is also called a 'Napoleon' after the rather small postured French emperror. Both Tompoes and mille-feulle probably have the same history but as far as I know it's not really known which pastery was first.
In my grandmothers recipe book I couldn't find the recipe but how to make every separate part was still in there. And it's not too difficult. Even Dennis can make it ;)
So here the recipe. And for the ones who speak Dutch/Flemmish here a good little video on how to make it:
http://www.een.be/programmas/dagelijkse-kost/recepten/tompoes
Ingredients
Pudding
- 1 L milk
- 1 or 2 egg yokes > keep the egg-whites to make 6-8 meringues later on (125g powder sugar, egg-whites, stir till stiff, bake on 125 C for one hour)
- 180 g sugar
- 40 g Maizena (corn starch)
- 30 g flour
- or 60 g of custard instead of the Maizena and flour
- bit of vanilla, vanilla essence or vanilla sugar
Dough
- 1 sheet of puff pastry (French pastry) (you can buy this in the supermarket, often frozen)
Icing
- 150 g powder sugar
- 12 ml milk (tablespoon)
The whole process takes at about 70 minutes.
1. Pudding.
Slowly heat up the milk just before boiling point. Add the vanilla to the milk.
Stir the other ingredients for the pudding in a kitchen-aid. I just did it by hand, but a kitchen-aid is faster.
Start with mixing the egg-yokes. Add the sugar and make a fluffy dough out of it. Now add the Maizena and flour.
Add a little of the warm vanilla-milk to the mixture and blend well.
Pour the mixture to the rest of the warm milk and stir continuously. Heat the mixture slowly but don't let it boil. When the first air bubbles pop up the mixture should be firm enough.
Put the mixture in a plastic bag and totally close the bag air tight (this will be your pastry-bag later on). Closing the bag avoids the mixture getting a 'skin' (sheet).
Put the bag in the fridge to let it cool.
2. Dough.
Roll out the puff-pastry and cut the dough in two. Bake the dough on a plate on 170C (use baking paper). To avoid the dough to raise and bubble up put a scale on top of the dough. The baking takes at about 30 minutes depending on your oven.
After baking you can cut the pastry in small blocks, rectangles or whatever you like.
3. Icing
Stir the sugar and milk to a thick shiny mixture.
4. Tompoes
Cut a 1cm corner off one of the corners of the plastic-bag. Now you can squeeze the pudding onto the bottom layer of the pastry-squares (or whatever shape you made them). Squeeze at about 2-3cm thick layers onto the pastry.
Put the other dough layer on top of the pudding and spread out the icing on top.
On Kings-day and when the national soccer team plays many bakeries sell the Tompoes with an orange coloured icing (orange is the Dutch national colour, in case you didn't knew...)
But most of the times the icing is made pink.
You can use berry juice instead of milk (like strawberry) to make the icing pink.
*Pink, yet another Dutch word...*
The pastry is often served during tea/coffee times after midday.
Eet smakelijk :)
Ingredients
Pudding
- 1 L milk
- 1 or 2 egg yokes > keep the egg-whites to make 6-8 meringues later on (125g powder sugar, egg-whites, stir till stiff, bake on 125 C for one hour)
- 180 g sugar
- 40 g Maizena (corn starch)
- 30 g flour
- or 60 g of custard instead of the Maizena and flour
- bit of vanilla, vanilla essence or vanilla sugar
Dough
- 1 sheet of puff pastry (French pastry) (you can buy this in the supermarket, often frozen)
Icing
- 150 g powder sugar
- 12 ml milk (tablespoon)
The whole process takes at about 70 minutes.
1. Pudding.
Slowly heat up the milk just before boiling point. Add the vanilla to the milk.
Stir the other ingredients for the pudding in a kitchen-aid. I just did it by hand, but a kitchen-aid is faster.
Start with mixing the egg-yokes. Add the sugar and make a fluffy dough out of it. Now add the Maizena and flour.
Add a little of the warm vanilla-milk to the mixture and blend well.
Pour the mixture to the rest of the warm milk and stir continuously. Heat the mixture slowly but don't let it boil. When the first air bubbles pop up the mixture should be firm enough.
Put the mixture in a plastic bag and totally close the bag air tight (this will be your pastry-bag later on). Closing the bag avoids the mixture getting a 'skin' (sheet).
Put the bag in the fridge to let it cool.
2. Dough.
Roll out the puff-pastry and cut the dough in two. Bake the dough on a plate on 170C (use baking paper). To avoid the dough to raise and bubble up put a scale on top of the dough. The baking takes at about 30 minutes depending on your oven.
After baking you can cut the pastry in small blocks, rectangles or whatever you like.
3. Icing
Stir the sugar and milk to a thick shiny mixture.
4. Tompoes
Cut a 1cm corner off one of the corners of the plastic-bag. Now you can squeeze the pudding onto the bottom layer of the pastry-squares (or whatever shape you made them). Squeeze at about 2-3cm thick layers onto the pastry.
Put the other dough layer on top of the pudding and spread out the icing on top.
On Kings-day and when the national soccer team plays many bakeries sell the Tompoes with an orange coloured icing (orange is the Dutch national colour, in case you didn't knew...)
But most of the times the icing is made pink.
You can use berry juice instead of milk (like strawberry) to make the icing pink.
*Pink, yet another Dutch word...*
The pastry is often served during tea/coffee times after midday.
Eet smakelijk :)
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