This Napoleon delicacy is one of my favorites to make!  The pastry cream is very fun to make and tastes delicious.   Creating the chocolate design on top of the icing was absolutely a joy to top it all off!  It was so simple yet looks very fancy.  This was one of my first times baking with puff pastry and I found learned how delicate it is and how careful one has to be when baking it.  I also started by cutting it before assembling it but later discovered that it is straighter and neater to layer it all together first and then cut it into smaller pieces.  It worked really well to use an electric knife to cut it because it did it slowly and did not press it down and crush it but produced a clean straight cut.  The picture below on the left is it put together before cutting it and halfway through the chocolate design.  Plate presentation can certainly transform any dessert!  On this one I used Hershey’s chocolate syrup and learned that it was a little too thin and caused the writing to spread out too much.  To fix this, I will write it and then freeze it for it to harden up or use a thicker chocolate icing to write.

 

**Update: the pictures below of the napoleons before being cut and plated were made more recently.  I love making these so try to make them frequently.  This time I learned that it is best to bake the puff pastry all in one sheet but then cut each puff pastry layer into three and then layer the napoleons.  When layering them, try to use a middle piece for the top since it is smoother for spreading the icing and designing.