Prepare the puff pastry by following our recipe or you can buy one already made.
Roll it as thin as possible, it must become a veil, pierce it with a fork and cook for a few minutes in a preheated oven at 180-200 C, be careful because being very thin may burn easily. Once cooked break the puff pastry getting irregularly shaped waffles

Prepare the custard following the directions in the preparation of our basic recipe but using the proportions of corn starch and wheat listed in the ingredients of this recipe, these quantities will yield a very thick cream.
When the custard is cold add the whipped cream steady, initially you can mix a couple of tablespoons of cream with the custard using an electric mixer to mix well and to make the mixture as creamy as possible. Soon after however be necessary to mix the cream with the cream very gently with a wooden spoon performing a gentle movement from the bottom up until you have incorporated almost all the cream. Leaving a part of it for the final decorations.
Once obtained this cream (called "diplomatica” in Italy and remember that this is not the cream Chantilly, click here for the recipe Chantilly cream). Arrange the pieces of puff pastry to form a disc in the tray for cakes. The tray must be previously greased with custard.
Then pour the cream with a spoon over the disc of puff pastry to form a mountain species of cream. As you add the cream place inside the pods (these will reinforce the structure you are doing, a kind of inner armor ...), once realized the mountain of “diplomatic cream” pour over the dark chocolate dissolved by addition of water (adding the latter will keep the chocolate semiliquid, also will become more shiny and dark).
So start to insert waffles in the cream puff pastry, you start from the lower and externally. There is no rule to be followed for the disposal of waffles. Indeed, the only rule is to put them irregularly, just do not leave too many blanks. When you insert waffles take care that a good portion of these go inside the custard in order to reinforce the structure and to prevent waffles themselves from falling out.
Garnish with dollops of whipped cream, sprinkle with icing sugar and your “mille e una foglia” (a thousand and one leaf) is ready.
If you prefer you can prepare the “mille e una foglia” (a thousand and one leaf) in single portion putting directly into the pot or in a cup a small heap of cream, then the chocolate and eventually the waffles. They are very nice these cupcakes single portion and certainly much easier to manage.

I learned the recipe of the thousand and one leaves in a Italian restaurant where I have worked (there, in fact they used to call it millefoglie). Besides being very flashy and appreciated by all, this cake has the advantage of being able to be prepared at the moment. You can keeps ready in the fridge the diplomatic cream and puff pastry already cooked and if necessary you can make single serving. Then for the big events you can make even a bigger pie like the one shown in this recipe.
The special feature of this cake is its immediate preparation. Paradoxically, if you make it too early the waffles puff pastry will soften too. Rather it is good that they retain all their crispness. This is one of the reasons why I decided not to call this sweet millefoglie, in fact even if it is prepared with the same ingredients it has a very different form even the proportions of custard and puff pastry are different. In addition, chocolate poured over makes this unique sweet, because it does not mix with the cream, then in the mouth the flavors remain distinct but overall inebriate our palates.

Each serving:
Energy: 295.20 Kcal
Total Dietary Fiber: 0.44 g
Alcohol: 0.00 g
Water: 68.43 g
Total Protein: 4.77 g
Animal protein: 3.73 g
Vegetable protein: 1.04 g
Total lipids: 20.44 g
Lipids animals: 17.30 g
Plant lipids: 3.14 g
Cholesterol: 126.76 mg
Available carbohydrates: 24.59 g
Starch: 11.84 g
Sugars: 12.75 g