Palmiers, the crunchy puff pastry cookies, are majorly made with cinnamon and are very easy to prepare. People follow a number of recipes; you can follow what seems convenient. It is a puff pastry that is beautifully sparkled with granulated sugar with cinnamon. The sugar caramelizes upon baking; it also adds the exciting crunch. These are one of those cookies that you can make quickly and are surprisingly delicious. If you are looking for a super easy dessert recipe that you can make in a hurry, this is it! These cookies have originated from France and are popularly known as palmiers. In French, palmiers mean palm tree and the cookies are named so because of their resemblance with palm tree leaves. While in German-speaking countries, these pastry cookies are also known as elephant ears or pig’s ears.
Initially, the French chef used to make these cookies out of pastry leftovers since it takes many efforts to prepare puff pastry dough. You can also do the same and try using your puff pastry leftovers in your recipe. You can cut the dough in a round shape as you do for a tart. You can get the best Italian cookie taste out of this recipe. Roll the dough a bit and coat it with a mixture of cinnamon and sugar, then bake! The puff pastry cookie will need only three ingredients.
- Puff pastry: You can look for puff pastry with whole butter because it tastes the best.
- Sugar: Use light brown sugar; it will give your cookie a caramel taste. If not, you can also use regular granulated sugar. Make sure that you do not use powdered sugar because it needs to provide crunch to the dough.
- Cinnamon- It is not necessary to use cinnamon, but it gives an authentic flavour to your cookie. However, traditional palmiers were made without cinnamon.
Steps to make it:
Many people order Italian cookies online; however, they taste the best when you make them at home by yourself. So here are the steps to make them.
Step 1: Prepare the cinnamon-sugar mixture.
Mix cinnamon and sugar together in a small bowl. Divide the mixture into three parts, two portions should be huge, and one should be tiny.
Step 2: Roll the dough.
Next, you need to roll out the puff pastry dough thinly on a baking paper sheet into a rectangle. It should be approx. 2-3 mm thick. Make sure you sprinkle the dough with a pinch of flour; otherwise, the dough will be soft and stick to the paper. You can brush off extra flour.
Step 3: Sprinkle the dough with the sugar-cinnamon mixture on both sides
Take the first large portion of the mixture you had divided. Sprinkle it on the rolled out puff pastry. Also, make sure that you apply sugar and cinnamon equally because the cinnamon often sits at the bottom. To have the perfect flavour in your puff pastry cookies, press the sugar with a rolling pin. Place a sheet of parchment paper on one side of the dough, flip it over and repeat the same process. Apply the paper only on one side.
Step 4: Roll up the dough
Roll up the dough inside from the longer side, roll up the other side towards the middle. Don’t roll it too tight, either too loose.
Step 5: Cut it into slices
Cut the dough with a knife into slices, each of 1cm.
Step 6: Dip the cookie in the shortest portion of the cinnamon mixture from both sides. Transfer the cookies to a pan lined with parchment paper. Keep cookies at a 4cm distance.
Step 7: Bake!
Bake the cookies at 450° F for 10 minutes and then at 350° F for the next 10 minutes. At first, the cookies get a boost, and they puff up better; the next 10 minutes are for baking all the layers properly. Serve the cookies when they are golden brown, and that’s when you have your best Italian cookies.