I made Napoleons once a very long time ago. I think it was before frozen puff pastry. At any rate, I made my own. Now, with the frozen stuff, it should be a piece of cake (pun fully intentional, hehehe!). My favorite part was making that design in the icing. I had always wanted to do that.

No recipe for you right now though. Sorry.

Jim

Julier, I have made what I think you are asking for. I've taken Pepperidge Farm Puffed Pastry Sheets and bake according to directions. I think the recipe is even on the box for Strawberry Nepolitians in case I forget something.
I then take 1 box of vanilla instant pudding (4oz. size) add one cup of milk and beat till thick. Whip 1 cup of heavy whipping cream and fold that into the pudding. Refrigerate. Once puffed pastry is cooled, layer with cream mixture and fresh strawberries. It's really yummy and makes a pretty presentation! Hope this helps Gina

Here's a recipe I got from a Danish cookbook:

Napoleons
Time: about 45 minutes. Makes about 15.

1 package frozen puff pastry (one packet contains 425 g/15 oz), or make the same amount from scratch

Thaw the puff pastry. Cut each sheet into three even-sized pieces. Put them on a cookie sheet and bake on the center rung of the oven for about 20 minutes (the original recipe gives no temperature, but my guess is 180°C/350°F). Cool on a cooling rack.

Custard:
2 eggs
2 tbs sugar
2 tbs cornflour
250 ml/8.5 fl.oz. milk
1/2 vanilla pod

Slice the vanilla pod down the middle and scrape out the seeds. Whip together the eggs, vanilla seeds, sugar and cornflour. Put the vanilla pod in the milk and warm to the boiling point in a saucepan. Remove the vanilla pod and whisk the milk into the egg mixture. Pour the custard back into the saucepan and warm up to the boiling point, whisking constantly, until thickened. Cool.

Glaze:
150 g/5.3 oz icing sugar
1 tbs rum or water

Topping:
Raspberry marmalade or jam
250 ml/8.5 fl.oz. whipping cream

To make the glaze, stir together the icing sugar and rum/water. Split each pastry puff horizontally into two about equally thick pieces. Put a thin layer of marmalade on the bottom piece of each pastry. Add a spoonful of custard and top with the other piece of the same pastry. Add a thin layer of glaze on top of each pastry. Whip the cream, put in a pastry bag with a fluting nozzle and decorate the pastries.

My mother made what she called Napolean a lot when I was young. Unfortunately her writing of English is very poor, she used metrics, the recipe mostly out of her head and now that she's 83 seem's hopeless at explaining how she used to do it.
They were a long and elaborate process that is different from what you see here in bakeries, though she is happy to eat those too:)
Basically she made what I think is similar to some sort of butter cookie in those pans with the clips on the sides. They are fairly thin, like a..... big butter cookie. She just made the dough, pushed it out in these tin things and baked. She made say 10 or 15, depending on how high you wanted the cake.
Then she made a frosting/filling - sort of a butter/sugar/creme that she spread between the layers. About every 3rd layer she would use a jam; apricot or maybe plum. Frost with the rest of the frosting, dust with something I can't even remember, then covered with this old aluminum cake top and let sit a couple days till it softened because the cookies were somewhat crisp. Oh man. Very dense. When she made these we ate for breakfast with coffee, for lunch and dinner till it was gone. I think she said all told it was a dozen eggs and a pound or more of butter and lots of sugar.
She's ethnically German, but grew up in the Soviet Ukraine where they had very little food. So this is probably some we don't have fancy bakeries home version.

A good web for recipes on traditional French cooking and pastries!

Here is a link that might be useful: Traditional French Napoleon Pastry

Thanks everyone - for some strange reason, I kept thinking I had to make the pastry!! Jim, if you did that, wow! Pepperidge Farm will save the day. The rest will be easy. Thanks!

Lisbet - thanks for the link. That pastry cream is wonderful - tried it out last night. Baked a yellow cake (ginger's recipe), cut it in half, filled with the pastry cream and topped with choc frosting. So good. I am testing creams out for the Napoleon.

I use the recipe from Joy of Cooking, but it is rather long. It starts with "choose a cool windy day," or something like that. I've only made them with my own pastry - I don't really trust frozen puff pastry. Anyway, you definitely need a marble surface for rolling out the pastry, and it does help to have a cool kitchen. I made them successfully in San Francisco, but I haven't attempted it afterwards, although I think I could here in Venice, where it usually is not too hot. I'm very impressed that they make excellent Napoleons in New Orleans, and I don't really know how they do it there.

For the filling, I used a modified crème anglaise recipe (I reduced the liquid a bit), and I put a butter/powdered sugar icing on top. It's been over 20 years since I've made them, and so I'm a bit rusty, but I do recommend making the puff pastry yourself. It's not that much work - most of the time is spent waiting for the dough to chill, somewhat like waiting for bread dough to rise.

Lars

Yeah well, here in L.A., it hasn't exactly been cool and windy..., but the good news is that I have a nice cool kitchen with cold concrete counters so that should help. But why are you making me now want to make the dough Lars?! I thought I was going to get away with this. Thanks a lot.