Palmiers or elephant ears are crunchy and flaky French pastries. These are made of simple readymade puff pastry sheets, rolled and sprinkled with sugar and then baked after slicing them to required thickness of your choice.These are just a breeze to make and tastes simply yum. As you see, it requires just 2-3 ingredients and varies what you like to flavour it with, savoury or sweet. Recently these heart shaped cookies were cooking on few blogs when I kept an eye on it just because of its simplicity. I made an unusual twist by adding the orange rind which gave it a zesty boost. You may simply make the original version by omitting the zest and using just plain sugar. The savory ones would make a lovely appetiser for large parties since it is so easy to make and will taste good.
Other variation that you may try instead of orange zest and sugar (I haven’t tried yet though):
1. Substituting orange zest by equal amount of lemon zest.
2. Sprinkling a bit if cinnamon instead of orange zest to get a lovely cinnamon flavour
3. Sprinkling cocoa along with sugar.
4. Sprinkling 3- 4 tbsp of grated parmesan to make a savory version.
5. Sprinkling ground nuts of your choice and sugar - (This sounds quite yummy.)
6. Spreading a thin layer of nutella.
7. A light spread of pesto..etc..
I came across some of the above on many sites, so you may try your versions or leaving it simply plain, just by adding sugar alone.
Here, I have used unrolled puff pastry which you need to roll. You can use the ready rolled pastry which makes the job even more easier, i.e you don’t have to roll the pastry if you are using the ready rolled ones and you can follow the same method given here.
Ingredients:
1 block of unrolled puff pastry (375g); (I used Jus-rol Puff pastry)
4 Tbsp granulated sugar + 2 ½ Tbsp for coating
2 tbsp finely grates zest of orange (A large orange’s rind)
1. Thaw the puff pastry block as per the packet instruction. But make sure that the pastry is cold when you roll it; for the ease of rolling, without the pastry sticking to the rolling pin. (Mine was not really cold so i had a bit of trouble rolling the pastry.)
2. On a clean work top, sprinkle 2 tbsp of sugar. Place the block of puff pastry on the sugar. Start rolling the pastry until you get a large rectangle.
3. Sprinkle another 2 tbsp of sugar all over and rub with hand to uniformly distribute it. Sprinkle the orange rind all over.
4. Now, make a marker on the centre of the rolled pastry. A light depression with your finger or a knife will do. Start rolling the pastry from the longer side until it reaches the centre of the pastry, where you have marked it. Roll the other longer side in the same manner until it reaches the centre of the pastry where it meets the other rolled end. When both rolled ends are next to each other, bring the one rolled side over the other. (See the pictorial representation). Press gently to stick the rolls together.
5. Cut the pastry into ¾ inch pieces and chill if for ½ an hour in the refrigerator. You will get about 20 – 24 pieces. Dip each sliced pastry in sugar (It will need around 2 ½ Tbs of sugar for coating.) until it is completely coated in sugar and place the sugar coated pastry on a cookie sheet lined with grease-proof paper, cut side facing down.
6. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Bake it in the centre of oven for about 15 minutes until the bottom part is golden brown. Flip all the palmiers with a spatula, bake for another 5-7 minutes until golden. serve with tea.
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The note of thanks that I mentioned in the title was thanking my dearest friend Shabna, lovingly known as Shabbu. She also hails from the malabar region and She is one of the gifted freinds that I received through blogging. Shabbu is my regular reader, one of my strong inspirations and a sisterly friend. Shabbu is a non-blogger but She regularly tries my recipes, gives me feedback and sends me the pictures after she makes them. I have to apologize, she had sent me these pictures very long back and its a shame that it took me so long to post it up here. There were times when I just thought of dropping blogging and it was shabbu who kept encouraging me to keep going. Thank you shabbu and Sorry it took me so long to post your pics. Here are few of the foods she prepared from my blog:
Malabar Chicken curry
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