Palmiers

So as I mentioned in my last post, my brother and I recently went to Madrid. While we were there we did a lot of sightseeing so did quite a bit of eating on the move. We also were trying to do eat for the least possible expense so while we were there, there were two particular foods we ate quite a lot of… Palmiers (or Palmeras in Spanish) and Churros (Philip definitely ate about 8 Churros a day on average…).

Palmiers were also one of my favourite bakery products during my year in France so this week I looked up a recipe to make them. I found a very simple recipe initially aimed at using up puff pastry trimmings by the Pink Whisk (aka Ruth Clemens from the Great British Bake Off, and my favourite contestant so far!). It looked so straightforward, what could possibly go wrong?

Clearly those were my famous last words. The first time I made them pretty much everything went wrong! They were the wrong shape, not sugary enough and not crispy in the least. The pictures here are from my second attempt later in the week but as you can see from the end result, I still can’t get the shape right but as I added lots more sugar and cooked them for longer they had a better taste and texture than before.

After looking at other recipes online, quite a lot of people roll their pastry into the centre rather than fold it and use even more sugar than I used on my second attempt so I think I’ll try that next time! As I haven’t found a recipe I really like yet I haven’t included one in this post but I have included a link here to Ruth’s recipe if you want to test it out yourself!