Palmiers

I grew up all over the world, but my most memorable experiences came from the 5 years we spent living in Côte d'Ivoire (the Ivory Coast), West Africa.  Côte d'Ivoire used to be a French colony and gained its independence from France on August 7, 1960.  When we lived there in the early-to-mid-80s, there was still a lot of French influence, including many boulangeries and patisseries turning out crusty loaves of French baguettes and flaky desserts.  One of my favorites was the palmier, a light, airy, flaky, sweet, crunchy "cookie".  Its base is a puff-pastry-type dough, which, while simple to make in theory, takes a lot of time, something I don't have much of these days.

Enter my Google search, which led me to where else but the Food Network website.  The two palmier recipes that stood out to me were from two of my favorite chefs: Ina Garten and Anne Burrell.  They use frozen puff-pastry sheets from the grocery store.  YAY!  Not exactly the same as the authentic stuff, but close enough and pretty damn good.

What I ended up baking today was a mesh of these two recipes.  Ina's recipe is more traditional, but when I saw that Anne puts cinnamon in hers, I had to try it that way.  Sans orange zest.

Oh, and if the thought of light, flaky, crispy pastries filled with sweet, crunchy caramelized sugar has you distracted and wondering if this recipe is South Beach Diet approved, sorry, but it's not.

Palmiers
Taken from this recipe and this recipe.
Makes approximately 4 dozen cookies

Ingredients:

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon (optional)
• 1 pinch of kosher salt
• 1 package of Pepperidge Farm frozen puff pastry (2 sheets), thawed
• 1 bag (12 oz.) semi-sweet chocolate chips (optional)

Directions:

• Combine the sugar, cinnamon and salt together in a small bowl.
• Sprinkle 1/4 cup of the sugar mixture onto a pastry marble.
• Open up one of the thawed pastry sheets directly onto the sprinkled sugar mixture on the marble.  Sprinkle another 1/4 cup of sugar mixture onto the top of the pastry sheet.  Make sure to coat every bit of the dough with sugar.
• Using a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a large rectangle, about 1/8-inch thick.  You want to press the sugar mixture into the dough while rolling.
• Take one of the short ends of the rectangle and fold it so the end reaches halfway to the middle of the rectangle.  Then fold it again so you reach the middle of the rectangle.  Do the same to the other side.  Then fold one side onto the other as if you're closing a book.  (You'll have a 6-layered flat "log".)
• Transfer the "log" to a baking sheet and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
• Do the same for the remaining thawed pastry sheet.
• Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees F.
• When ready to bake, remove one of the "logs" from the fridge and place onto a clean flat surface like a pastry marble.  Slice it into 1/4-inch pieces (approximately 24 pieces per "log"), and lay each piece flat onto a Silpat-lined baking sheet, about 2 inches apart.
• Bake for 12 minutes, then flip the cookies and continue baking for an additional 3-6 minutes, depending on your oven.  You want the cookies a nice golden brown.  Check them often towards the end; when I did 5 minutes mine turned out slightly burned, but 3 minutes was perfect.
• Let cool for 5 minutes on the pan, then once the cookies firm up a bit, transfer them to a wire rack to finish cooling.
• For optional chocolate dip: Melt chocolate chips in a double boiler over simmering water.  Dip completely cooled cookies in the melted chocolate and lay them on parchment paper to set.
• Store the cookies in an air-tight container.