Apricot Glazed Palmiers

First, I just want to give a big thanks to all of you wonderful friends and readers who have given me such kind words of encouragement regarding my new eBook. I really appreciate it; you have no idea how much it means to me. Secondly, I want to share this simple recipe for apricot glazed palmiers with you. Palmiers are French pastries that are made in the shape of elephant ears, and they’re usually dusted with sugar and cinnamon for a sweet treat. They’re flaky and crisp because they’re made with puff pastry dough, which also makes them buttery and irresistible too. 

If you were to make traditional palmiers, you’d sprinkle the cinnamon sugar mixture on your counter, place your sheet of puff pastry on top, and then slightly roll the sheet out a bit more so as to press the sugar into the dough. Afterward, you’d sprinkle the top of the puff pastry sheet with the remaining cinnamon sugar mixture, then fold and cut the dough into the elephant ear shapes. This double-sided coating of sugar is what gives the palmiers their sugar-dusted appearance, as well as the sweet taste they’re known for. 

What I did here is give classic palmiers an easy, flavorful twist. Instead of dusting both sides of the puff pastry sheet with the cinnamon sugar, I merely sprinkled the sugar on top of the puff pastry (and not the bottom) before folding and cutting the dough into elephant ears. I then baked the palmiers in a hot oven, and when they came out warm on the baking sheet, I brushed the tops of the palmiers with some apricot jam. I love making these apricot glazed palmiers because glazing the palmiers gives them a pretty, glossy appearance. Glazing them with jam is also a really easy way to add some different flavors to the palmiers. I made these apricot glazed palmiers with my homemade puff pastry, which I have a video tutorial and recipe for here, but they can easily be made with store-bought puff pastry. I think these apricot glazed palmiers are best served as a side to some coffee or tea in the afternoon, as they’re perfect for nibbling on. The palmiers are light enough so as to not ruin your appetite for dinner, yet they’re satisfying enough to fulfill your sweet tooth. 

Apricot Glazed Palmiers

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Ingredients

• 1 sheet of puff pastry, see this recipe for homemade puff pastry
• 1 tbsp granulated sugar
• tsp about 1 ground cinnamon
• apricot preserves to brush on top

Instructions

1. Preheat the oven to 450°F. Slightly roll the puff pastry sheet out slightly so that it’s more rectangular than square.
2. Sprinkle the sugar all over to the top of the puff pastry sheet. Then sprinkle on a light dusting of ground cinnamon all over the sheet.
3. Grab one of the longer sides of the puff pastry sheet and fold it over towards the center, once. The width of the fold should be about 1 to 1.25 inches, depending on how much you rolled your puff pastry sheet out. Now grab the other long side of the sheet and do the same thing.
4. Repeat the previous steps until you’ve got two long folds meeting at the center. Grab one of the folds and fold it over the other so that you have one long fold. Use a very sharp knife to cut 1/2 inch wide slices from the dough. Try to use a sawing motion with your knife rather than pressing the knife down; you don’t want to ruin the shape of the dough.
5. Place the palmiers onto a baking sheet and bake for approximately 7 minutes on one side, before taking them out of the oven and flipping them over with a spatula. Be careful - they’re hot! Bake another 5 to 6 minutes until both sides of the palmiers are a nice golden color.
6. While the palmiers are still warm, brush some apricot jam (microwave the jam for 30 seconds if you need to loosen it up) on the tops of the palmiers.