Hi friends! Remember me? It’s been over a year since my last post, an absence that was entirely unplanned. I got busy (with work, life, and then summer … the usual) and stopped cooking. Then inertia took over, so that even when I started cooking again, I stopped pausing every few steps to hover dangerously over counters and take photos. On top of that, on those rare occasions when I did have the time and patience for photos, I wasn’t very inspired to write.
This space has always been a creative outlet for me, a place to share my passion for cooking and eating and talking about food. Suddenly, it felt like work. So, at the start of this year, my 10th (!!!!!) year of blogging, I decided to lean into the break, and come back to blogging when I felt ready to do so, rather than forcing the issue.
And then the world changed. Covid-19 has impacted everyone in some way, and every day, I feel fortunate that my loved ones and I have our health and each other. I fled my small NYC apartment* for the much larger rooms/outdoor space of my parents’ place in Delaware, and like many people, am finding solace in the kitchen.** So far, I’ve made multiple rounds of banana bread, cookies (one batch very good, one batch less so), one mediocre focaccia, and one dreamy almond-apricot coffee cake.***
I’ve really sought out cooking projects, the kind of hours-in-the-kitchen cooking that I either didn’t have time for or didn’t feel excited about for much of the past year. Chief on that list was this recipe for palmiers, the flaky-crisp barely sweetened cookie that I tried on my first trip to Paris more than a decade ago.
Palmiers are made with puff pastry, and most recipes use store-bought. But binging The Great British Bake-Off convinced me that one day, I should try my hand at homemade puff pastry, and then Erin McDowell, baker extraordinaire and star of Food52’s latest show, “Bake It Up A Notch,” gave me the blueprint. The first episode was puff pastry, and each time I watched the video to give edit notes, I convinced myself a little bit more that *I* could make this.
Erin’s palmiers are extra doable because they’re made with “rough puff,” as the Brits say. That means that instead of encasing a block of butter in dough and wrestling with it rolling it out, we’re making a much simpler dough, one that’s fairly similar in technique to pie crusts. The major difference is in the size of the butter pieces–when making pie, you want peas, but here, we’re looking for walnut halves.
I won’t lie: there is some tedium here. Roll, fold, refrigerate; roll, fold, refrigerate — this is a recipe literally ideal for days when you are stuck at home with very little to do. Per my “research,” you can watch about 7 episodes of The Office while making these palmiers, and rather than wonder afterwards why you spent your day watching The Office, you can laud your productivity while eating a flaky, crispy, buttery cookie.
How are y’all coping with Covid-19? Have you made anything delicious? Hope you’re safe and well!
*In some very-important-to-me and not-at-all-relevant-to-you news: last summer, I fulfilled a decade-old dream and bought an apartment! It is a one-bedroom in the same UES neighborhood I’ve lived in since 2014, and I can’t wait to show off the kitchen!
**Also, television. So far, I’ve watched Tiger King, multiple Harry Potter movie marathons, and every British murder mystery show aired in the last three decades. If you have any show suggestions, please (please!) send them my way!
***There’s also been some non-baking cooking: a reasonably successful attempt at chicken curry, sous-chefing mangsho, a very delicious version of Meera Sodha’s Genius Cauliflower Korma, and a lot of pastas and salads and ‘dillas.
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Erin did a very thorough demo of the rough puff pastry dough in video form, though she uses a different folding technique. She demo-ed the folding technique explained here earlier in video (here, in case it helps!)
Ingredients
- 3–1/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1–1/4 teaspoons salt
- 1 pound (4 sticks) cold unsalted butter
- turbinado (or regular granulated) sugar, for sprinkling
Instructions
- In a large bowl, combine the flour and salt.
- Add the butter cubes to the flour mixture, tossing to coat thoroughly. Using your index finger and thumb, squish the butter cubes until flat-ish, continuing to toss and coat with the flour. You’ll know you’re done when most of the butter pieces are the size of walnut halves.
- Add the water, mixing until the dough comes together — it shouldn’t be sticky. I’d recommend adding 7-ish ounces to start, then slowly adding the remaining water as needed. (I only needed 8 ounces.) Form the dough into a 4-x-6-inch rectangle, worrying less about the actual size and more that you have sharp edges and corners. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes, until the dough is chilled but pliable.
- The first fold: On a lightly floured countertop, roll out the dough into a 3/4-inch-thick rectangle, roughly 10-x-25 inches (again, you’re worried less about the actual size and more about the thickness of the dough, and whether you have sharp edges and corners). Complete a four-fold: fold the top part of the dough about one-quarter of the way inward, then fold the bottom half to meet it. Then fold the larger half over the smaller half, hiding the seam. You should have four layers. Re-wrap the dough in plastic, and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- The second fold: Lightly flour your surface again, and re-roll the dough to 3/4-inch thickness (approximately 10-x-25 inches again). Now do a three-fold: fold the top part of the dough one-third of the way inward, then fold the bottom half like you would a business letter. You should have three layers. Re-wrap in plastic and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- The third fold: Again, lightly flour your countertop, then do a second four-fold. Re-wrap the dough and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- The fourth (and final!) fold: Lightly flour your countertop, then do another three-fold. Re-wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes.
- Shape the palmiers: Divide the dough in half using a sharp knife. (At this point, you could triple-wrap half of the dough and freeze it for future rough puff adventures.) Lightly flour your surface, then roll out the dough to a 13-x-15-inch rectangle that is 1/2-inch thick. Generously sprinkle the turbinado sugar over the dough, then fold the two edges inward so that they meet halfway. Then fold one half over the other, so that you have one long log that looks like a heart.
- Using a sharp knife, slice the dough into 1/2-inch-thick cookies and transfer to parchment-lined baking sheets. Sprinkle the tops with additional turbinado sugar. (Second freezing option: at this point, you could freeze the palmiers on the baking sheets until solid, then transfer them to a freezer bag and keep them for up to 3 months. Bake them straight from the freezer, adding 5-ish minutes to your baking time.) If you’re baking immediately, transfer the baking sheets to the refrigerator for 20 minutes, while your oven preheats to 425F.
- Once the oven reaches 425F, bake the palmiers for 25-30 minutes (start checking from 20 onwards), until they are a deep golden brown. Cool before serving.
Notes
Adapted (minimally) from Erin McDowell
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