I made these in February, which, admittedly was weeks ago. But this isn’t the first time I’ve made palmiers, nor will it be the last. If you have a box of puff pastry in your freezer, and sugar, and I always do, palmiers are very easy to whip up.
I was inspired to make these heart-shaped cookies from this Today’s Parent recipe.
But you should know, any time you use puff pastry, that the directions will need to be modified based on your oven. Read on to find out more.
Substitutions: If possible, I like to think of the the first batch as a test one, when it comes to any recipe using puff pastry. It gives me the opportunity to figure out whether I need to adjust the time in the oven and the thickness of the palmiers. In this case, for the second round, I cut my palmiers slightly thicker than the first batch that went into the oven and kept them in for a minute longer. I like them on the crispier side, so I made sure they started to caramelize before pulling them out. It also quickly became clear to me that the sugar content was not nearly high enough to my liking, so I quickly rolled all the other uncooked cookies in some sugar before putting them on the cookie sheet for baking.
Word to the wise: Be sure to keep each batch of raw pastry in the fridge before you bake it. Better yet, in the freezer where it will keep its shape. In fact, I kept my last two rolls of uncut puff pastry in the freezer until I knew company was coming over.
Would I make these again: I’d probably stick to the more traditional recipe and skip the jam as it tends to ooze out and turn sticky and even slightly hard if you keep it in the oven for even a minute too long. But you should know that these are best eaten fresh. You can certainly keep them in an airtight container but once they lose that crispness, they are just not the same.
Grade: Five stars out of five. These are French classics and with good reason: easy to make, elegant, satisfying, and easy to improvise to your taste. Try them and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
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