Palmiers

Looking for something elegant for your holiday potluck or cookie swap this year that makes an impression but requires minimal ingredients, expense, time, and effort?

 
Palmier - A palm tree (French: palmier or cœur de France) or elephant ear is a French pastry in a palm shape or a butterfly shape, sometimes called palm leaves, elephant ears, french hearts, shoe-soles, Pakistani jalebi or glasses.

Palmiers 
1 package puff pastry, thawed
granulated sugar*

*be creative, add cinnamon, other spices or even lavender

Defrost the puff pastry either overnight in the fridge, or on the counter in 30-40 minutes.  You want the pastry to be cold but not soggy, so if you are defrosting out of the fridge, take care.

Sprinkle the counter top with granulated sugar, about 1/4 cup. Depending on the brand of pastry you buy, if your puff pastry is rolled or folded up in between sheets of parchment paper, carefully unfold the pastry on top of the sugar, lightly pressing down so that the sugar sticks into the pastry. Use care to keep the pastry from sticking to the counter top.  Sprinkle more sugar on top. If your puff pastry comes in two thick squares, separate the squares.  Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of one square, and use a lightly floured rolling pin to roll it out to a rectangular shape.

Once your dough is in a rectangular form, sprinkle granulated sugar on top and use the rolling pin to lightly press the sugar into the pastry dough (again, taking care to keep the dough from sticking to the counter.  Sprinkle sugar underneath the dough as needed).   If you have two sections of dough, repeat.

There are two ways to create your palmier shape. The easiest and more traditional, is to simply fold over the left third of the dough (on the long side), and then fold the right third of the dough on top of the left side.

They will end up looking like this:

The second, and less traditional, is to picture your dough in half, and starting from the left, tightly roll the dough up until the mid point.

Then do the same on the right side, so you have two curled halves meeting in the middle.

Refrigerate for 30 minutes while the oven preheats to 400 degrees.

Once the dough has chilled, use a sharp knife to cut into 1/2 inch slices and place side-up on cookie sheet covered in parchment paper.

Bake for approximately 15-20 minutes, checking at 12 minutes, or until golden brown.  Don't overbake.  Makes about 2 dozen palmiers, depending on the amount of puff pastry and size of the cookies.