Palmiers

You may have noticed that today's post is not entitled Tasty Recipe Review. That's because there's really not that much to review, but I do have for you 2 Palmier options. One is the classic sugary elephant ears that we all know and love and the other is something I decided to whip up for Thanksgiving, sort of pumped up Palmiers if you will.

I had mentioned that I was dying to try and make these sweet morsels, well now I got the chance. I just went for it, decided to go get myself some puff pastry, you know I'm not going to make it it's too time consuming, and just go for it.

They are so unbelievably easy to make, I think I might just whip up a batch every single day for the rest of my life! Of course my hips will hate me for it, so maybe every other day.

All you need to make these are puff pastry and sugar and that's it! It's that simple.

You can find puff pastry anywhere these days, but if you would like to make it (congratulations, I admire you!) I found this site that shows you how to make your own puff pastry.  

Sprinkle your rolling space with about 1/4 cup of sugar and lay your puff pastry sheet on top like so:

Now sprinkle another 1/4 cup of sugar on top of the pastry

Now you have to roll the sugar into the dough

See how the sugar becomes embeded into the pastry, when the layers spread during baking it's going to be one big delicious sugary goodness!

Now on to forming the popular elephant ears. You start by folding in the sides:

Fold another time:

And one more time:

You end up with a long roll of dough, press it down and then cut it to form the rectangles:

These are your Palmiers. I rolled the tops in sugar, you can also coat them with an egg wash if you like. Place them on your cookie sheet about 2 to 3 inches apart to give them room to puff up.

Aren't they cute?

These go into a 375 degree oven for 12 - 16 minutes until they are golden brown. You may have to turn them over in the middle of baking if you see the bottoms are cooking way faster than the tops.

Remove them from the cookie sheet while still warm and let cool on a wire rack. You are now ready to pop these babies in your mouth, Yum!!!

Now for Thanksgiving, I decided to give these a twist. I filled them up with pumpkin, dates and almonds. You prepare them exactly the same way, you just add filling instead of sugar to the dough.

For my pumpkin filling you will need:

1 cup pumpkin puree
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup finely chopped dates
1/2 cup chopped almonds

Mix these together to make the filling:

Then proceed the same way as the sugar Palmiers, roll the dough in sugar, but instead of sprinkling sugar on top of the dough, spread out the filling and form your cookies.

Here is the finished product, looks good right. Very tasty!

You can fill these with anything, sweet, salty, whatever you like, or make them with just sugar, they are always going to be delicious ... Enjoy!!!

Tasty Recipe Review: Cinnamon Spiral Crisps

Who doesn't love cookies? They're fun, easy to make (most of the time) and delicious!!! I really really wanted to try and make Palmiers today. You know those big elephant ear cookies that are crispy and sugary and just truly irresistible. Unfortunately I could not find any puff pastry and I sure wasn't going to try and make some!

I sat down with my book from Elinor Klivans 125 Cookies to Bake, Nibble and Savor to see what inspired me. I reviewed one of her recipes before remember. Parisian Toffee Crisps. The word crisp just gets me going you know, it just sounds like something you want to taste. Crisp. This is how I came across this recipe here Cinnamon Spiral Crisps, they sounded fascinanting! 

Let me tell you, these are quite addictive, be careful!

The first thing I noticed about this recipe is that the dough is quite the same as making pie crust. So I thought what on earth are these going to taste like? Cinnamon pie? I don't know what a cinnamon pie would taste like, but probably it would be these cookies and let me say they are delicious! I could not stop eating them.

The recipe is extremely simple. Unfortunately it does not specify the temperature and cooking time. Big slip on her part! Since most things are baked at 350 degrees F, that's what I used to be on the safe side. As for the time, it was a bit more complicated. I started with 16 minutes and then checked every 2 minutes or so. I ended up baking these for 20 minutes. But I recommend start checking them at 16, you don't want to overbake these.

Be sure to remove these from the pans while they are still hot, otherwise they are prone to break. My first batch was all but completely destroyed before I heated them up again so they would loosen.

I found this recipe wonderful and very versatile, you can practically fill this dough with almost anything and they would come out tasting great. I am definitely trying these with a salty filling soon. Yes I said salty!! So many things come to mind I don't know where to start Yum!! I'm sure this dough would make some pretty good Palmiers...

Cinnamon Spiral Crisps
1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick) cold butter, cut into 8 pieces

Put the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and stir to blend.

Put the flour and salt in the large bowl of an electric mixer. On low speed add the butter pieces. Mix just until they are the size of small lima beans. Slowly add 3 tablespoons of ice water, a tablespoon at a time. Stop beating as the mixture begins to hold together and come away from the sides of the bowl.

Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured rolling surface and form into a square disk about 1 inch thick. Refrigerate fro 15 minutes, until the dough is cold an firm.

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough into a 12X9 rectangle about 1/8 inch thick. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture evenly over the dough. Roll the dough into a tight roll. Pinch the edges to seal them. Press the seam. Freeze the roll unbaked, or refrigerate for about 1 hour until it is cold and firm, then slice an bake the cookies.

This is what my roll looked like

And this is what the unbaked cookies look like

Kinda like a cinnamon roll right?

Till next time, I hope you enjoyed this review and remember, if you have a Tasty Recipe that you would like to share, or if there's a recipe that you have been wanting to try and just haven't been able to, let me know about it. I'll give you a Tasty Review!