Vietnamese baked goods illustrate the wonderful intersection of flavors and traditions. Walk into a Little Saigon bakery and you’ll note Chinese-style layer cakes dressed in a cloud of whipped cream, French cream puffs and eclairs, and Vietnamese coconut cassava cake. In the cookie section, you may see bánh palmiers (palm cookies) – crunchy, delicately sweet French cookies made from puff pastry.
In Vietnam, butter and wheat flour – the main ingredients for puff pastry, are luxe ingredients. The tropical humidity makes it hard to work with puff pastry, which requires a cool environment. For that reason, treats made from puff pastry treats are extra special. Within the Viet repertoire, puff pastry can be put to good use for savory banh pate so, which are domed shaped pastries filled with a pork mixture. (See Vietnamese Food Any Day for my mushroom version.) And then there are palmiers, which are often made as large cookies but petit palmiers are my style. I get sweeter crunch because there’s greater surface area exposed to the sugar. The smaller cookies are cute looking and can serve them with other cookies as an assortment or with ice cream or simply with a cup of tea or coffee. I can also play with the flavor.
Puff Pastry Choices and Tips
There’s no need to make your own puff pastry. I use frozen pastry dough. For best flavor, go all butter with the puff pastry. Around December look at Trader Joe’s for their puff pastry from France. Otherwise, splurge for DuFour, a widely distributed brand. If you are vegan, consider Pepperidge Farms puff pastry, which does not contain butter.
Keep the pastry frozen for up to 1 year! To thaw frozen puff pastry, I let the pastry thaw overnight in the fridge. Work with chilled puff pastry. It is easier to handle if it’s cold. And when cutting, to avoid messing up the many layers of lamination, use a downward motion, not a sawing motion.
How to Spice Up Palmiers
Sugar is typically the only flavor agent in palmier cookies but you can spice things up. Despite the French being in Vietnam and Vietnam being a great source of spices, I’ve never seen Viet cinnamon, Chinese five-spice, or the like in palmiers. Given that the pastry is rolled in sugar, why not flavor the sugar to add another flavor layer?
I played around with Royal Cinnamon from central Vietnam, Red River Delta coriander from northern Vietnam, homemade Chinese five-spice powder, and a Viet four-spice blend that included hạt dổi, an usually sweet, menthol-ish spice from the north western reaches of Vietnam. (More on my favorite spice sources here.) Aside from the sweet spices, you could add ⅛ teaspoon salt for a savory note, if you like. It’s super fun to play with the spices to create your own Franco-Vietnamese cookie.
Viet-Spiced Petit Palmiers Video
For a run through of how the petit palmiers came together in my kitchen, watch this video. Turn off ad blockers if you cannot see the video. If that does not work, refresh your browser screen. Hope this video and the recipe sends you on your way to palmier paradise.
Viet-Spiced Petit Palmiers
Ingredients
- 8 ounces frozen puff pastry, thawed overnight in the fridge or according to package directions
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- About 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon, Chinese five-spice powder, ground coriander, or a favorite warm spice
- 2 to 3 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar
Instructions
- In a small bowl, combine the granulated sugar and 1 teaspoon of cinnamon. Taste and make sure the spice flavor is strong. If not, add spice by ¼ teaspoon.
- Sprinkle about ½ tablespoon of the spice sugar on your work surface. Unfold the puff pastry onto your work surface. Sprinkle a little more of the spice sugar on top to prevent sticking.
- Gently and roll the pastry out into a rectangle that is about ⅛ inch thick; mine usually measures roughly 11 by 9 inches. As needed, move the puff pastry and flip it over on the work surface to make sure it is not sticking.
- Sprinkle about one third of the remaining spice sugar on top of the puff pastry. Working lengthwise, use a ruler and back of a knife to gently mark the center of the puff pastry. Fold over each of the long sides of the rectangle towards the center, leaving a ¼ inch gap. Sprinkle another third of spice sugar on top of the dough. Gently roll the rolling pin over the top to make sure the sugar adheres. Fold in the two side together to form a flat log.
- Use the remaining sugar to coat the entire pastry log. Aim to use all (or nearly all) the sugar because it will melt, caramelized, and create a sweet crispy cookie. Place the log on a piece of parchment (or reuse the plastic that came with the pastry) and then transfer to a baking sheet. Freeze for 20 minutes, until firm enough to slice neatly.
- Meantime, line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper and preheat the oven to 400F. Use a bench scraper or similar tool to gather and scrape up any excess sugar from your work surface; reserve the sugar in a small bowl, if you like.
- Transfer the chilled dough to your work surface. Use a knife to trim the ends of the dough log so that it is clean. Working with half of the log at a time, cut the dough into ¼-inch-thick slices. Transfer the sliced U-shaped dough pieces to a baking sheet line with parchment paper. Arrange the cookies about 1 ½ inches apart. They will expand during baking. Repeat with the other half of the dough log.
- Let the cut dough sit for about 10 minutes to come to room temperature before baking.
- Mist or lightly brush water on the top of the cookies. Put 1 to 2 tablespoons of confectioner’s sugar in a fine mesh strainer and generously dust the cookie tops. Bake one baking sheet of cookies at a time for 8 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown, then remove the baking sheet from the oven. Use a spatula to flip each cookie over. Lower the oven heat to 375F. Rebake the cookies for 7 to 12 minutes, until they are golden brown with no light streaks in the middle. (You may have to remove some early browned ones and let them cool on a rack.) Increase the oven heat to 400F to bake the remaining cookies. Let the cookies cool completely to crisp up before eating.
