A crisp puff-pastry cookie shaped like a palm leaf or pair of scrolls. A sheet of puff pastry is coated generously in sugar, its two sides rolled inward to meet at the centre, then the log is sliced and the slices baked flat so they open into a symmetrical palm or heart shape. Sold in patisseries and supermarkets alike, it is eaten as a sweet or with coffee, and is known in English as a palm leaf, elephant ear or French heart.
The palmier is a use for puff pastry that appears in France around the turn of the 20th century; it has no recorded inventor and is generally described simply as an early-20th-century French pastry, often said to have begun as a way to use up trimmings of puff pastry. Its name is the French word for palm tree, after the shape the slices open into; the same cookie travelled widely and is known under many local names, from elephant ears to pig's ears to French hearts. Beyond the broad date and the French attribution, the early history is not well documented and precise origin claims should be treated with caution.
All crunch and caramel: the cut faces bake into a brittle, glassy sheet of caramelised sugar over flaky pastry, snapping cleanly and dissolving toward the buttery, slightly bitter-sweet centre. A good palmier is evenly deep-amber and dry-crisp throughout; underbaked it is pale and soft, overbaked the sugar turns acrid. It keeps its snap a few days in an airtight tin but goes chewy once it takes up moisture from the air.
Two things happen in the oven. The puff pastry laminates as usual — steam from the water in the butter and dough forces the hundreds of fat-separated layers apart into flakes. At the same time the sugar pressed into the dough melts and, on the exposed cut faces in contact with the hot tray, caramelises: heated past its melting point the sugar browns and forms the hard, glassy amber shell that sets crisp on cooling. Baking the slices flat, and often turning them partway, presses the caramelising faces to the pan so both sides glaze evenly rather than just puffing.
Variations
Closely related rolled-and-sliced puff-pastry cookies include the sacristain, a twisted sugared stick, and the arlette, a thinner, more lacy version often spiced with cinnamon. Savoury palmiers swap the sugar for cheese, tapenade or pesto and are served as an apéritif. Vanilla sugar in place of plain sugar is a common refinement, and some bakers dust the cut faces with extra sugar before baking for a thicker caramel crust.
On the Palate
Where Palmier sits in the French flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 8How it's made
6 steps · 25 min
- 110 min
Mix most of the sugar with the vanilla sugar and the pinch of salt, reserving a little plain sugar for the cut faces. Roll the puff pastry into a rectangle on a surface dusted with the vanilla sugar, pressing it into both sides of the sheet.
- 25 min
Fold the two long edges inward to meet at the centre line, then fold the two halves together so the sugared spirals are stacked.
Watch outFold so the sugared spirals stack tightly — an even, firm log is what gives clean palmier hearts after slicing.
- 330 min
Wrap and chill the log until firm, about 30 minutes, so it slices cleanly.
- 48 min
Slice the log into pieces about 1 cm thick, press the cut faces in the reserved sugar, and lay them flat and well spaced on lined trays.
- 520 min
Bake at 200°C until the undersides are caramelised, then turn each cookie and bake until both sides are deep amber and crisp, about 15 to 20 minutes total.
Watch outBake until the undersides caramelize, then flip and bake to deep amber both sides — the sugar must caramelize against the hot tray, or they puff pale without the glassy shell.
- 615 min
Cool on a rack until the sugar sets hard and glassy.
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