First I put the condensed milk in a water bath to caramelise, then set it aside to cool. I brought the milk to the boil. I mixed the eggs, sugar, butter, flours, salt and vanilla sugar. A few lumps do not matter. I poured the mixture into the hot milk, stirring constantly, and heated it until it thickened. I cooled it quickly in a cold-water bath and then came one of the most tedious jobs: I pushed all the custard through a fine sieve and stirred in the condensed milk.
Including boiling the condensed milk, it took about four hours before I could finally say ‘voilà’ 🙂 You can buy ready-caramelised condensed milk, but for some reason I did not think of that and chose the uncooked kind.
I heated the oven to 180°C and started rolling the pastry into pieces of the right size. I baked every sheet separately for 10 minutes. Horribly tedious
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I took a cardboard base and put a slightly larger sheet of baking paper on it. The very bottom layer was custard, then a pastry sheet. I spread cranberry jam on that and added more custard. I made seven layers like this. The top layer was custard. I crushed the eighth pastry sheet with almonds and covered the cake with the crumbs. I made the numbers from cranberries and added a few dots of jam too, so that everything got used. Then into the fridge, ready for the table the next day 🙂 With the custard, the trick is not to use too much and not too little. I put too much on the lower layers, so the slices slid apart when cut. It did not look especially pretty, but… it did not change the taste, and next time I’ll know better 🙂
Everyone decorates it in their own way. This is how I did mine.
All in all, it turned out to be a very good cake.