What is a Palmier in French?

A palmier translated from French simply means 'palm tree', pig's ear or elephant ear. It's a French pastry, shaped in to a palm leaf or butterfly as you can see from the photos.

What is a Pastry Sheet?

For those of you who aren't sure what a puff pastry sheet is, they're found in the fresh and frozen section of your supermarket.

You can buy them like in the photo below, where it is ready rolled, or you can buy the pastry in block form where you will need to roll the pastry out using a rolling pin to your desired thickness. 

The pastry sheet as seen below is made up of layer upon layers of buttery puff pastry.

Once baked, you get a wonderfully flaky, puff texture which makes the pastry light and airy. You can use it for sweet and savory dishes, for example, savory vol au vents, or sweet blueberry cream cheesecake bars. 

It's very versatile and for me, it saves time making it yourself.

How Do You Make Puff Pastry?

Making your own puff pastry can be very time-consuming.

We have a lovely quick and easy recipe that will give you the same results as puff pastry, so if you have time and want to make the pastry from scratch, we recommend you use our quick and easy flaky pastry recipe. 

How are palmiers made?

In our recipe below, we show you how to make, roll and shape these palmier cookies so they're elegant and delicious! I've added a quick video to show you how it's done so be sure to take a look!

Prep Time

20 minutes

Cook Time

 20 minutes

Serves

24 Cookies

Ingredients

1 Package Frozen Ready Rolled PUFF Pastry.
3 ½ Tablespoons or 50 g butter, melted
½ Cup or 100 g Brown Sugar (divided)
⅔ Cup or 60 g Sesame Seeds (divided)

• Unroll the pastry and flatten it on the parchment wrapper. 

• Place a fresh piece of parchment paper on the worktop, slightly bigger than the puff pastry sheet, and sprinkle HALF of the sugar evenly all over the sheet, and then HALF of the sesame seeds.

• Take hold of the pastry sheet (with the paper still on it) and turn it pastry side down onto the sugar mixture and use a rolling pin to LIGHTLY roll over the mixture so as to press it gently into the pastry.
• Be careful not to roll hard so you keep the shape of the pastry. 

Peel the top parchment paper off the pastry, and sprinkle the remaining brown sugar and sesame seeds over the surface of the pastry. So now you should have sugar and sesame seeds on both sides of the pastry.

See the video below for how to roll the pastry for palmier cookies.

• Take one LONG side and tightly roll the pastry toward the middle. Stop when you get to the middle.

• Then take the other side of the pastry and roll toward the middle. 

• Cut the ends off to make it tidy.

• Then cut in to ¼ inch thick slices.

• Place flat on a parchment lined baking sheet. You may need to gently push the cookies down if they are too thick.

• Brush the tops lightly with the melted butter

• and another light sprinkling of sugar. 

• Bake for approximately 20 - 25 minutes or until the cookies puff up and turn golden brown. Keep an eye on them because they will burn very easily! Halfway through, turn the cookies over so they brown evenly.

How long can you keep Palmiers?

Palmiers can be stored at room temperature in an airtight container for 2 - 3 days. After that, the cookies will go soft and lose their crispy texture. 

If you wanted to freeze them, (baked) that is also possible, however, we advise you crisp them up in the oven again for 5 minutes at a high temperature, around 400 F or 200 C.

Alternatively, you could make the palmier cookies and arrange on a baking sheet, then quick freeze them (RAW) on a baking sheet. Once frozen, transfer to airtight plastic bags and return to the freezer. You can then bake from frozen at the same temperature for around 20 minutes.