Palmiers — puff-pastry elephant ears

i. Origin & history

The palmier is French and its name means 'palm tree', after the shape of the finished biscuit, which is taken to resemble a palm leaf. It belongs to the family of pastries built from pâte feuilletée offcuts, and it is exactly the sort of thing that arises in a professional kitchen with leftover puff pastry and a need to sell it.

It is generally dated to the early twentieth century in France, appearing in pâtisserie repertoires as a petit four sec — one of the small dry biscuits served with coffee or as part of an assortment. Its simplicity is the point: two ingredients, no filling, no finishing, and it keeps.

The names are where it gets interesting, and there are a great many. In French it is palmier, and also cœur de France, papillon (butterfly) and, in some regions, oreille or oreillette (ear). In English-speaking countries it is very commonly called an elephant ear, and also palm heart, palm leaf or simply French heart. In Spanish it is palmera or oreja; in German Schweineohr — pig's ear; in Portuguese palmier. Nearly every name is a description of the shape.

That variety reflects how widely it travelled. Palmiers are standard in bakeries across Europe and Latin America, are a fixture of Chinese bakeries in Hong Kong and beyond, and are one of the more common items in the frozen-pastry aisle worldwide — the pastry-and-sugar formula scales well industrially.

ii. Sugar as the whole point

A palmier is a caramelisation exercise. There is nothing else in it, and everything depends on getting the sugar to caramelise properly without the pastry burning first.

The sugar does two jobs. Rolled into the pastry, it is what the layers slide against, and as it melts in the oven it turns to liquid caramel that seeps between the leaves and then hardens into the glassy, brittle texture that distinguishes a good palmier from a merely flaky one. Sugar on the outside caramelises against the tray and produces the dark, bittersweet, almost-burnt surface that is correct rather than a mistake.

The temperature question is genuinely awkward, because sugar caramelises around 160 °C and above, but puff pastry needs a hot oven — around 200 °C — to generate the steam that lifts the layers. The usual solution is to start hot to get the lift, then either turn the oven down or watch very closely, and to flip the palmiers partway through so both sides caramelise evenly. This flip is what most home recipes omit and most professional ones include.

Cold pastry is the other requirement. Puff pastry works because solid butter separates the layers and turns to steam. Warm dough lets the butter melt into the pastry, and you get a flat, greasy biscuit rather than a layered one. Rolled palmier logs should be chilled hard — freezing for twenty minutes is standard — before slicing, both for lift and because a cold log slices cleanly while a soft one squashes.

The last thing to know is that they spread. A palmier roughly doubles in width in the oven, so the slices need much more space on the tray than seems necessary.

iii. Ingredients

Makes 12 servings · scroll the side panel to adjust

• 1 sheet ready-rolled puff pastry (about 30 × 25 cm)
• 150 g granulated sugar
• Pinch salt
• Optional: pinch cinnamon

There are two ingredients, so both matter. Use all-butter puff pastry — the flavour is entirely exposed here and a pastry made with vegetable fat tastes of it. Shop-bought all-butter puff is completely respectable for this and is what most people should use. For the sugar, granulated or caster both work; granulated gives a slightly more pronounced crunch, caster a more even caramel. Demerara gives a deeper, more molasses-like result. Optional additions that work well: a pinch of flaky salt, ground cinnamon, or vanilla sugar. Do not use flour on the work surface — use sugar, which is the traditional method and prevents the pastry sticking while adding to the caramelisation.

iv. Method

1. Sprinkle the work surface generously with sugar. Lay puff pastry on top; sprinkle with more sugar; press in lightly.
2. Fold the two long edges to meet in the middle; sprinkle more sugar; press. Fold again to meet in the middle; press. Press the two halves together along the centre.
3. Wrap and chill 30 min. Cut into 1 cm slices. Place flat on a lined tray with space to spread.
4. Bake at 200 °C for 8 min; flip; bake another 6-8 min until both sides are deeply caramelised.

v. Tips & common mistakes

• Roll out on sugar, not flour. Sugar on the work surface stops the pastry sticking and becomes part of the finished biscuit. Flour dulls the caramelisation and leaves a raw taste.
• Freeze the log before slicing. Twenty minutes in the freezer. A cold, firm log cuts into clean rounds; a soft one squashes into ovals and the spiral is lost.
• Space them widely on the tray. They roughly double in width. Six to a standard tray is about right — crowded palmiers fuse into a single sheet.
• Flip them halfway through baking. This is the step that separates good palmiers from pale ones. Turning them over lets the second side caramelise against the hot tray, giving an even, deep colour on both faces.
• Take them further than looks comfortable. A properly caramelised palmier is deep amber to brown, not golden. Pale ones are soft and taste of raw sugar. There is a narrow window between correct and burnt, so watch the last few minutes closely.
• Move them off the tray immediately. The caramel sets hard as it cools and will glue the biscuits to the tray. Lift them onto a rack within a minute of coming out of the oven.

vi. Variations

Savoury palmiers replace the sugar with cheese, tapenade, pesto or anchovy and are a standard cocktail snack. Cinnamon palmiers mix ground cinnamon into the sugar. Chocolate palmiers are dipped or drizzled after baking. In Spanish bakeries, the palmera de chocolate — a large palmier half-coated in chocolate — is a fixture. Chinese bakeries often make a smaller, lighter version. Arlettes are a related French biscuit: cinnamon-scented, rolled and then rolled again very thin, so they bake into delicate discs rather than hearts.

vii. Serving & storage

Palmiers are petits fours secs — dry biscuits served with coffee, tea or a dessert wine, often as part of an assortment rather than alone. They are also good alongside ice cream or a fruit fool, where the brittle caramel plays against something soft. Serve at room temperature; there is no reason ever to warm or chill them.

Because they contain no moisture beyond what is in the pastry, they keep well — up to a week in an airtight container at room temperature, and they stay crisp as long as they stay dry. Humidity is the only real enemy: in a damp kitchen they go leathery within a day or two, and the fix is a few minutes in a low oven to drive the moisture off again. Do not refrigerate them, which introduces exactly the moisture you are trying to avoid. Unbaked logs freeze beautifully for up to three months and can be sliced and baked from frozen, which makes them an excellent thing to have in reserve.

ix. More from French

• Apple Turnover — French chausson
• Cronut — croissant-doughnut hybrid
• Apfelstrudel — apple strudel
• Schneeballen — fried snowball pastries
• Kremna Rezina — Slovenian cream slice
• Napoleon Cake — mille-feuille