Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Purim Palmiers

I didn't even know what a palmier was.
My friend Barrett mentioned that she had made them for Purim, using Tina Wasserman's recipe.

I looked it up...and, oh my, they sounded delicious.
Thank goodness for Google, since I could look it up without feeling stupid. Oh, but now I've told all of you....okay. Well... you love me anyway, right? 
Plus, I had two packages of puff pastry languishing in my freezer.
(I think that Purim is a baking holiday just to help us get rid of the chametz right before Passover!) 

So I learned a little about palmiers. They are a French-Jewish Purim treat that are meant to represent Haman's misshapen ears. (Purim has so much silliness.)

Oh, and they do taste amazing. Purim is all about delicious.

 Tina's recipe is here. It was super easy.

 My recommendations - it took longer that 30 minutes to defrost the puff pastry to be workable. Almost an hour. I thought I'd be able to roll out hamantaschen while waiting for them to freeze, bake, etc, but it seemed silly to clean up all that sugar on the board so I couldn't really multi-task. They baked for much shorter than the time suggested, only about 8 minutes on the first side and 3 on the second side so watch your oven.

Rolling up the puff pastry:
What they look like all rolled up:

After rolling, you freeze them for 30 minutes and then slice and flatten them out:


The finished product:
 
The verdict:
2 out of 4 of my kids loved them.
I am a big fan and planning to make them a new part of my Purim baking routine!
I'm not giving up on hamantaschen though.

3 comments:

Leora said...

Those do look like ears! Very cool. Happy Purim!

brenda said...

I am SO happy to see this post. These are my husband's favorite (he's sephardic and Israeli) cookies of all time and they just don't make a good version at any of the kosher local bakeries.
I never knew they were called palmiers (so fancy, I call them elephant ears - dunno where I picked that up)
I also never figured out why they call hamantaschen "oznei haman" in hebrew. your post enlightened me on that point as well.
Further, I just used your puffy pancake recipe this week to use up some of our flour - I agree that Purim must be a baking holiday to get rid of the chametz :)

Patty said...

I've called them 'elephant ears', as well. Now, I'll use the name palmiers. Thanks for re-posting. Chag Purim Sameach!