Gingersnap Palmiers (Pg 51)

So I didn't completely fail at this recipe, but it wasn't a total success either. I guess I'd give myself a B-. There were a few complications, and most of them I blame on my oven, but I'll get to that.

If you're like me, you're wondering to yourself, "Self? What the heck is Palmier? How do I even say that?" Of course, if you know how to speak French you're probably not asking yourself the second part of the question, but I asked myself. It's pronounced "pahlm-YAY" but I like to say it phonetically, cos I like to do that with French words. It's funny. It's funny to me, at least.

So I'm browsing around online for information about these cookies, and a lot of pages say "This is a simple recipe!" Well they weren't talking about

the recipe from the Martha Stewart cookbook.

It started out simple. You don't even have to make the dough, it calls for

pre-made pastry dough. And then you make a mixture of sugar with some

spices, and you make a syrup of brown sugar, molasses and freshly grated

ginger. All you have to do is sprinkle the sugar mixture on the dough, then brush the syrup on, and then you roll both ends to meet in the center. Then you put the logs of dough in the freezer. 

I always make too much work for myself by not reading the directions all the way through before proceeding. And like an idiot, I keep telling myself I will change this bad habit, and I keep doing the same thing over again. In this case I should've saved the sugar mixture and the syrup because they're used again right before putting the cookies in the oven, but I didn't realize and I thought I was done with them so I threw them out. Oops. So I had to make more the next day. Oh well.

So I ran into a huge issue here with my oven temperature. The recipe says to first bake them for 10 minutes at 425 degrees, then take them out, flip them and brush more syrup on them, and bake them for another 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Now, I've mentioned before my oven has a bit of a problem with keeping the temperature steady. I had pre-heated it to 425 and literally left it at 425 for like, 40 minutes while I was prepping the cookies. It stayed constant. Until I put them in and 8 minutes into them baking it shot up to 450 degrees. WHAT THE......?!? 

Yeah, I was a bit angry. Especially because these are made with puff pastry, which, as the name implies, puffs when it's baked. These puffed out way too much and lost their cute little heart shape. One of the things I found online said to watch these while they bake specifically because they'll puff out too much, and it said make sure your temp isn't too high. If I ever bake them again, I'm just baking them at 400 degrees like every other sensible recipe says.

So I was a bit disappointed with the way these looked but they taste pretty nice. I found them to be a bit sticky. The syrup is brushed on top of the cookie halfway through baking. Even though it ends up getting pretty crispy, it's still pretty sticky. But it does taste a lot like gingersnaps, which I love. That would be the brown sugar and molasses, which I love.

Another thing I found online says that these are sometimes called Elephant's Ears. I've never seen a real live elephant ear, but I'm pretty sure that they are bigger than these cookies.

Yield:

Recipe predicts: 3.5 dozen.

Actual: 2 cookies short of 3.5 dozen. Huh? I guess I sliced a couple of them too thick.

26 recipes down, 149 to go.