Despite their appearance, these are in fact palmiers. I like the change from the heart shape, but that isn’t the only difference. To make these pastries extra decadent, they are sandwiched together with raspberry jam and dusted with powdered sugar on the top. Oh la la.
Recently I’ve grown to love sweetened laminated doughs thanks to my new-found love for kouign amann (See: b.patisserie and Dominique Ansel). I’m getting ahead of myself because that’s actually made more like croissant dough which is the later part of the chapter, but in any case, the palmier is similar in that, sugar is layered into the dough so when it bakes the sugar caramelizes and makes for a very crisp almost brittle-like texture.
To make this dough I cut off a portion of a batch of dough that had completed it’s third turn, which is the point where sugar is incorporated into the layers for palmiers, saving the remainder of the dough without sugar for other projects. In doing so, my strip of dough was not as stable as the full slab so rolling it out caused the layers to shift slightly, which you can see below. It didn’t disrupt the texture or flavor, just in appearance it’s not perfectly straight. I don’t mind but I thought I’d at least explain why they look like that.
The palmiers really expanded lengthwise in the oven. To get a nice golden color, they required an additional 10 minutes in the oven. When I went to move them to a cooling rack, they were really fragile. Some of the layers broke off.
I liked the idea of turning these into sandwiches. The flavor contrast from the jam was nice however it was a bit crunchy having to bite into two palmiers. The book says once you assemble, the sandwiches are good for just a few hours because after that they soften. I actually waited to see if they would soften, thinking I’d prefer that, but they actually kept their crunch after 3-4 hours. Perhaps I’d tweak this concept and serve the palmiers as they are with a little bowl of jam on the side for dipping.
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