Tompouce is a play on Tompouce = Tom poes (tomcat). Tompouce A tompoes or tompouce is a pastry in the Netherlands and Belgium. It is the local variety of the mille-feuille or Napoleon, introduced by an Amsterdam pastry baker and named after Admiraal Tom Pouce, the stage name of the Frisian dwarf Jan Hannema. In the Netherlands, the tompoes is iconic, and the market allows little variation in form, size and colour. It must be rectangular, with two layers of puff pastry. The icing is smooth and pink, or occasionally white. For many years however, the top layer has been orange
Tompouce pastry cream when trying to cut a piece off, makes this difficult and messy, inspiring the humorous article "Hoe eet je een tompoes?" 'How do you eat a tompoes?'. An easier, if slightly less dignified, way of eating a tompouce is to take the frosted top layer off the pastry and hold it one hand, with the bottom half in the other and then take sequential bites, one from the top and then one from the bottom. Even then, the whipped cream tends to squashed out onto the hand. The name of Tom Poes, a cartoon character by Marten Toonder,