Cinnamon Sugar Palmiers

 I have not had much luck with Claire's cookie recipes so far. First, I attempted her Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe - how bad can you mess up a chocolate chip cookie, I thought? I even made the recipe once before, way back in September, and I remember them turning out fine. But alas, I decided to turn these cookies into an experiment in altitude baking, and both batches - the "control" one as well as the adjusted one - turned out a lot less than great, so I decided to shelve that recipe and come back to it later. More recently, I attempted the Brown Butter & Sage Sablés, which I was actually looking forward to. That dough might still have been possible to salvage, but I found that after trying to form a log with it several times, even after chilling, it was extremely sandy and fragile and would just fall apart at the slightest touch. Perhaps the extra flour I added to account for altitude was the culprit in this. Maybe it was the fact that for the first time in this project, I did not read the recipe the whole way through before starting, and the baking gods and goddesses were punishing me for that. Eventually, I made the sometimes noble decision to give up and make the recipe again another day. I ended up nibbling on the dough throughout the week - it was really good.

I was really placing all my hope on these palmiers to relieve me of my cookie woes. To be honest, I felt pretty confident in them. I think a lot of people know what palmiers are, but they just aren't sure what they're called. They're those wonderful little caramelized, swirl-shaped puff pastry cookies that are sold in just about every grocery store. I've also heard them called elephant ears, and I don't think there's anyone who doesn't like them. Claire's version is made with cinnamon and demerara sugar and uses either rough puff pastry or pie dough. Interestingly, in the recipe's footnotes, she suggests a number of variations, one of which is cardamom! I'll have to try those next - I really want a recipe where I can actually taste cardamom in the forefront, and these seem like a good application for that.

I'm not really a fan of the question "what's your favorite thing to bake?" because it's just so open-ended. But I honestly feel like pies and pastries and that whole family of baked goods have a special place in my heart. Making pie dough or puff pastry feels like the right mix of technical and relaxing, and it's the closest I'll ever get to feeling like a professional. Not that I'm aspiring to that level, but it's fun to pretend. I haven't made a pie or pastry recipe yet for this project, but these palmiers feel like the closest I've gotten so far. I'm not entirely sure how adjacent rough puff and pie dough are supposed to be - I usually make my pie dough more like puff pastry anyways - but from my understanding, pie dough is a bit more tender and sturdy while rough puff is more light and flaky. In her rough puff recipe, Claire has you grate some frozen butter into your flour mixture (it's unusual, but you heard that right), and then slice some more butter into thin sheets to toss in. After the dough is hydrated and rested, you take it out, fold it into thirds, and roll it out again, repeating the process several times. This helps create tons of flaky layers in the finished product. I truly believe that while pie and pastry dough is a bit of a process, it's definitely not as intimidating as people make it out to be, and can actually be fun and worthwhile to make by hand. That being said, I don't see any reason why you couldn't start with store-bought puff pastry for this recipe.

I love recipes that look very fancy and impressive but are actually pretty simple, and these palmiers definitely fit into that category. There are a few key steps, like pinching the rolled double-log (I guess you could call it that) of dough together, which help the palmiers keep their shape in the oven, but rolling the dough into its shape is actually a pretty easy, forgiving, and dare I say fun process. The palmiers bake for around 25 minutes. I decided to be a bit liberal with the timing, leaving them in closer to 30, because I like my pastry bien cuit ("well-baked"; see, I know a little French!) However, I totally forgot that the sugar would caramelize in the oven, and my palmiers ended up a little burnt on the bottoms. I'll remember to monitor them closer the next time I make them. That being said, the burning looked worse than it actually was. The palmiers were still very edible, and they turned out extremely beautiful (at least on one side, oops). 

To be honest, these are my idea of a perfect cookie. Let's be honest, you'll never get as flaky of a pastry with rough puff as you will with very traditional laminated pastry or even store-bought, but I think it's still an impressive and delicious method, and very achievable. The cinnamon and demerara sugar mixture adds a nice sweetness and a really lovely textural element, both through the sugar that stays coarse on the top and sides as well as the sugar that melts and caramelizes into nice glassy puddles on the bottom. Overall, the cookies are definitely not too sweet and feel very appropriate as a little snack for any time of day. I think they'd be especially nice in the morning with a cup of hot coffee or tea.

Verdict: 9/10

Charli XCX is definitely one of my biggest "guilty pleasure" artists (even though I don't really believe in that term). "Lighting", from her album Crash, was my most played song of 2022, then I got tired of it a little, but now I'm rediscovering just how much I love it and why I listened to it so much. It's addictive, just like these palmiers (look at how clever I am lmao).