Puff Pastry to Palmiers

What ended up as this gorgeous heart shaped cookie glistening with sugar did not start out so pretty. In fact, it started out as a mound of lifeless looking dough that I hoped to turn into puff pastry over the course of a few days to then transform into these rolled heart shaped cookies known as "Palmiers."

It seems as if I'd try to make these pretty little heart shaped cookies for Valentine's day, but the true reason for me making these this month is for my Nan's birthday. Palmiers are her favorite pastry and something I always remember her choosing for a treat. In fact, when I lived with her during college in England, I had several trips to France and would always return home with a bag of Palmiers from one of the French patisseries. They are usually made quite large there, but I wanted to start out small and I love the petite version of these delicate cookies.

You can make these using puff pastry sheets purchased from a grocery store, but I wanted to try to start from complete scratch and actually make my own puff pastry. I used the puff pastry guide in my James Peterson "Baking" cookbook and proved quite helpful.

Here is the mound of dough that I started out with which is sans butter at this point. You scored the top of the dough and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight.

The next day, the scored pieces from the top were folded out and then rolled out. I kneaded the butter into a nice square shape in plastic wrap.

The square of butter was placed in the middle and the dough folds were wrapped around the butter like a little package.

The dough was rolled out to evenly distribute the butter and then folded over a few times before refrigerating again so the butter could solidify more before continue to roll.

The dough was rolled and turned seven times with chilling in between before rolling out the final product of puff pastry. I was hoping I had folded it enough and the butter was even throughout, but I wasn't too sure at this point.

To make the palmier cookies, I rolled out the final dough in granulated sugar and measured it to get a rectangle of at least 9 x 14.

The sugar was so glittery on the ivory dough and I was happy to see all the layers in the dough.

I always thought these cookies were individually shaped into hearts so whoever came up with this method for making these is a genius. The dough was folded in twice with generous sprinklings of sugar in between. Then it was rolled together and placed on its side.

There is the heart shape we're looking for!

The cookies were sliced about 1/4" thick from this log of folded puff pastry and placed on a parchment lined baking sheet.

They baked very nicely and turned out a pretty golden brown with the shiny melted sugar in between the layers of pastry. I was happy that they baked so well as I wasn't sure if my smooshed looking slices would turn into pretty golden hearts like the book.

I hope Nan would be proud of these. I called her on her birthday to let her know I was making them especially for her and I have a cellophane bag of palmier cookies ready to be packaged and sent to Victoria road for her to enjoy.

Buttery Brioche

I've always liked the flavor and look of brioche and love brioche french toast. I even just like the word and "brioche" is just such fun to say. It's said to be one of the most difficult breads to make and while it takes a while for the dough to rise and it's more work to shape the different loaves, it's not too difficult. I happened to have some of the pretty fluted molds that I've never used, so along with a guide from Fine Cooking magazine and a little time on my hands, I tackled brioche.

It is a very buttery bread with a 1/2 pound of butter. What seemed like a greasy mess while I was mixing it turned out to be a beautiful smooth and elastic dough.

After mixing all the ingredients together in the mixer, you had to knead and fold it a few times before forming it into a perfect ball to prepare it for rising.

First I let it rise at room temperature in a bowl for about an hour.

Then, I put it in the refrigerator to rise overnight, which the guide indicated would provide the best flavor.

While I let the dough come to room temperature the next day, I buttered the pretty brioche molds.

When the dough was warm, I cut the dough into sixteen (almost) equal pieces and weighed them out to try to get them as consistent in size as possible.

I first formed the dough for the small brioche tins to make brioche rolls, but I only had three of these molds. They weren't perfect, but I thought they looked quite pretty for my first try.

I then rolled out the other pieces for the large brioche mold.

I still had some dough, so I made a few little loaves as well.

Now that they were all together, it was time for them to rise again for about an hour.

After they had their final rising, I brushed on an egg wash and they were ready to bake. They only needed to bake for about 20 minutes and turned out a lovely golden brown.

We enjoyed the rolls for breakfast with jam and Audrey was calling them "cupcakes."

The loaves turned out nice as well and I made french toast for breakfast another morning. I think I'll use the large brioche mold for dinner parties for a pretty arrangement of dinner rolls that people can pluck off. This was well worth the time and has multiple uses. It would be great in a bread pudding or to use for stuffing as well.