Little Palmiers

Palmiers: French name means palm trees because the cookies resemble the leaves of a palm. This is the description that Bo writes in the recipe; sometimes I call them butterfly (which sounds lovelier). This is the cookie that I really want to make for a long time, but using the purchased puff pastry is not challenging enough, so it takes me a lot of time to practice the puff pastry making before start making it. But if you don’t want to make your own puff pastry, you can use the purchased one, because you will bake the cookie in batch, so making it a lot or less doesn’t seem to be any problem.

Even he mentions that I should not leave out the sugar in the dough but the taste is so sweet that I can’t enjoy it as much as I want. But if you don’t mind the sweet taste, Bo said that “The granulated sugar not only takes the place of flour to prevent the dough from sticking, but also makes the Palm Leaves crisp, shiny, and sweet, as the sugar caramelizes while the cookies are baking. You may not use up all of the sugar in the recipe, but the more sugar you can roll into the puff pastry, the better. Should you fail to roll enough sugar into the dough, the cookies will not only be less sweet, they will spread out too far and lose their special shape.” I wonder if my cookies will be bad the first time I leave out the sugar but it’s still ok (the credit goes to his puff pastry recipe that is so good, the palmier comes out great, they puff and crisp). So, use sugar or not I think it depends on your desire.

Ps. I include the sugar in the recipe, so if you don’t use it in rolling just follow the way to fold the puff pastry.

Little Palmiers

Make about 90 pieces

Half the recipe of All-Butter Puff Pastry

8 ounces (225 g) granulated sugar (or just enough to roll the palmiers)

1. Roll out the puff pastry in the granulated sugar to make a rectangle measuring 24 x 12 inches (60 x 30 cm) and about ⅛ inch (3 mm) thick. If the dough is uneven or too large on any side, trim it to the proper dimensions. Keep turning and moving the dough as you roll it out, spreading the sugar evenly underneath and on top of the puff pastry at the same time to keep the dough from sticking to the table.

2. Place the dough in front of you horizontally. Fold the long sides of the rectangle in to meet in the center. Fold the dough again as if you close the book, cover with plastic and put it the refrigerator until firm.

3. Preheat the oven to 219 °C.

Cut the folded strip into slices 1/8 inch (3 mm) thick, (and cover with sugar if you don’t use the sugar when rolling the dough, like me). Place the slices, cut-side up, on sheet pans lined with baking paper or Silpats. Keep in mind as you place them on the pans that they will spread to about 3 times as wide while baking.

4. Bake until the sugar starts to caramelize and turn golden on the bottoms, about 8 minutes.

5. Remove the pan from the oven and quickly turn each cookie over on the pan, using a spatula or metal scraper. Let the cookies cool.