Palmiers

Buttery, Flaky, Homemade Palmiers

So, on Monday I gave you a recipe for homemade puff pastry. Now I owe you a recipe worth making with it! Today we’re making Palmiers. These are fancy-looking, buttery, flaky cookies that are often also known as “Elephant Ear cookies”. The name is French (it means “palm tree”, as the cookies are supposed to look like palm leaves). They’re light, super flaky, and buttery, which won’t surprise you considering they’re primarily made out of our flaky, buttery homemade puff pastry that we learned how to make earlier this week. Slightly crisp, those beautiful, delicate layers shatter under your teeth and melt on your tongue. I make my palmiers by filling them with a blend of cinnamon and sugar, though some recipes use just granulated sugar. I’ve also included some savory filling options below. Once you have your puff pastry prepped, palmiers are incredibly simple to make and only require a bit of rolling, brushing with butter, sprinkling with cinnamon/sugar, and folding. The hardest part is probably waiting for them to chill in the oven. Let’s get to it!

How to Make Palmiers

The steps listed below correspond to the numbered photos in the collage above. I don’t know about you but a visual usually really helps me in a way written instructions don’t. For more visual cues, check out my Palmier video below the recipe! Don’t forget to repeat all the steps listed above with your second half of the puff pastry!

Chill, then bake on high heat

At this point you have your palmier dough ready, but letting it chill for one hour is critical. Palmiers need to be cold before going into the oven. Once the dough has chilled for about 30 minutes, you’ll want to start preheating your oven so that has reached temperature before the palmiers are ready to bake.. In order to encourage those nice flakey layers, puff pastry typically requires a hot oven, and this palmiers recipe is no exception. You’ll need to preheat your oven to 415F (215C) and this can take a long time to do. You want your oven to be nice and hot by the time you’re ready to slice and bake your palmiers. Cold pastry and a hot oven is instrumental to nice flakey palmiers.

Once your oven is hot and your palmier log has chilled, use a sharp knife to cut into slices that are about ½″ thick and arrange them on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet. Give your palmiers some space, as they are going to spread in the oven quite a bit!

Palmier Filling Options

As you can probably tell from this recipe, I’m partial to cinnamon palmiers. The filling for these is made by simply whisking together granulated sugar and cinnamon and then sprinkling it over the dough as described above. However, some traditional palmiers are made with just sugar (no cinnamon) and some recipes even use just brown sugar (or a mix of brown and white granulated sugar). You can also make savory palmiers by skipping the sugar (and cinnamon) entirely and sprinkling cheese, garlic, bacon, prosciutto… the list goes on.

Enjoy!