We had two of our grandchildren visit us for a few days before their parents came to take them back home. The kids wanted to do some cooking while they were here, so I tried to think of recipes that would be not only easy but also tasty. The latter is sometimes a bit of a challenge with kids who are in the process of forming their own likes and dislikes.
I remembered a leftover sheet of puff pastry in the freezer. What could be easier and tastier than a batch of palmiers, the crisp sugary French cookies? Problem one solved.
The kids and I prepared dinner for their first evening with us. Palmiers would be the dessert, and nachos would be the main dish. All of that seemed simple enough.
We made the palmiers first so that they would be ready as soon as we finished eating the nachos.
We used a recipe from The Fanny Farmer Baking Book by Marion Cunningham (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1984, p 262). The only ingredients are puff pastry and sugar. That made it fun for the kids to roll out the pastry dough on a bed of sugar, fold them up, slice them, flatten them a bit with the rolling-pin, and bake them for only a few minutes. The hardest part of the process was resisting eating them before we made the nachos.
RECIPE
Palmiers
Ingredients
- 1 sheet puff pastry dough, thawed
- granulated sugar (about one cup)
Method
- Thaw frozen puff pastry over night in the refrigerator according to package instructions
- Sprinkle a generous layer of granulated sugar on the work surface. The sugar should be spread to a larger size than the sheet of puff pastry
- Unfold the thawed puff pastry on the sugar. Roll out the pastry to a thickness of 1/8 inch thick using a rolling-pin and being careful to maintain the rectangular shape of the pastry.
- Sprinkle the top generously with more sugar.
- Fold the two long sides of the pastry sheet so that they meet in the middle of the sheet. Then fold one side onto the other.
- With a very sharp knife, using a sawing motion, cut the pastry roll into ½ inch slices. Then place each slice on one of its cut sides, flatten with the rolling-pin, and arrange on a cookie sheet lined with a Silpat cooking mat.
- Bake in the middle of an oven preheated to 400°F for 15 minutes or until the cookies are crisp and lightly browned and the sugar is caramelized.
- When the cookies are baked, remove from the oven, and transfer to a cooling rack.
From the Family Table 