Apricot and Almond Palmiers
Crisp, caramelized puff pastry pinwheels filled with apricot and almond frangipane. They take twenty minutes to assemble and disappear in five.
Steps
- Stir the apricot preserves, almond flour, butter, almond extract, cinnamon, and salt into a thick, spreadable paste.
- Sprinkle a work surface generously with granulated sugar and roll the puff pastry into a 10 x 14-inch rectangle, turning it to coat both sides.
- Spread the apricot-almond filling thinly over the pastry, leaving a 1/2-inch border.
- Fold the two long sides of the pastry inward so they meet in the center, then fold the dough in half lengthwise like a book.
- Wrap the log and freeze it for 30 minutes, until firm enough to slice cleanly.
- Cut the log into 1/2-inch slices and arrange them 2 inches apart on a parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Bake at 400 F (200 C) for 8 minutes, flip each palmier with a spatula, and bake 6 to 8 minutes more, until caramelized and crisp.
- Cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack and dust with powdered sugar.
In depth
Why This Recipe Works
Every element here has a job. All-butter puff pastry supplies the flavor, but the sugar you roll the dough in is what turns it into something caramelized rather than merely flaky. Rolling in granulated sugar instead of flour does two things at once: it stops the dough from sticking, and it presses a layer of sugar directly against each sheet of butter. At 400 F (200 C) that sugar melts and then caramelizes against the pastry, which is where the deep amber, glassy surface comes from. Flour on the board would only dull it.
The filling is built to stay put. Apricot preserves on their own are too wet and would boil out of the folds, so 60 g of almond flour soaks up that moisture and turns the preserves into a thick, spreadable paste. The tablespoon of softened butter keeps that paste loose enough to spread in a thin, even layer without dragging at the dough. The almond extract and cinnamon are doing more than flavoring: apricots have a faintly bitter, floral edge, and both ingredients lean in that same direction, so the finished palmier tastes more distinctly of apricot than a plain jam filling would.
Finally, the fold and the freezer decide the texture. Folding the two long sides to the center and then folding the whole thing in half like a book creates the double spiral — two coils facing each other and meeting at the middle. The 30-minute freeze is what allows a knife to pass through cleanly; warm butter smears sideways under the blade and crushes the layers you worked to build. Baking hot makes the water in the butter and preserves flash into steam quickly, lifting the layers before the sugar hardens. And the flip at the 8-minute mark is what caramelizes the second face and keeps the bottoms from scorching while the centers finish.
Shaping and Slicing: Where the Looks Are Decided
When you fold the two long (14-inch) edges of the 10 x 14-inch rectangle toward the center, each side is traveling half the depth of the dough. The goal is for the two edges to meet exactly on the middle line. If they overlap, you rolled one side too deep, and the log will lean as it chills and slice into lopsided hearts. If they fall short of each other, there is a bare strip of pastry down the middle and the finished palmier will have a soft seam through it.
Trim the two ragged short ends off the chilled log before you start slicing — they never bake evenly, and they are your cook's treat. For the rest, use the longest, sharpest knife you own and cut straight down with light pressure, or use a gentle sawing motion. Pressing hard squashes the spiral flat before it ever reaches the oven. If the filling smears across the cut face or the log starts to give under the blade, wipe the knife and put the log back in the freezer for 5 to 10 minutes.
The 2 inches of space between slices on the sheet is not decorative. As the butter melts and the layers open, each palmier spreads outward by roughly an inch on every side. Crowd them and they fuse into one sheet that you then have to break apart, which tears the caramelized edges. Bake one tray at a time on the middle rack, and let the second tray wait in the refrigerator rather than warming up on the counter.
What Each Substitution Changes
The preserves are the easiest thing to swap and the easiest thing to get wrong. Apricot jam with visible fruit pieces will not spread into the thin, even layer this recipe depends on — warm it briefly and press it through a sieve, or pulse it smooth, before measuring. If your preserves are on the runny side, stir in an extra tablespoon of almond flour to bring the paste back to a spreadable thickness. Peach, plum, fig, or raspberry preserves all work in the same 120 g quantity; anything with plenty of pectin and a thick body behaves closest to apricot. Fresh apricots are a different matter: raw ones are too watery and should be cooked down with a spoonful of sugar first.
For the almond flour, blanched ground almonds are a direct substitute at the same weight, though the filling will be slightly coarser — grind them in short pulses with a spoonful of the granulated sugar so the nuts do not turn oily. Almond meal with the skins left on gives a speckled, faintly bitter filling. Do not reach for almond paste or marzipan; both contain sugar, and the filling would turn sticky and candy-like in the oven. If you would rather not taste almond at all, leave out the extract, but the apricot-almond pairing is the point of the recipe. Salted butter works in place of unsalted — simply drop the 1/8 teaspoon of fine sea salt.
The pastry itself matters more than most people expect. All-butter puff pastry caramelizes deeply and tastes of butter; pastry made with shortening rises a little more evenly but browns paler and flatter. If your sheet is larger or smaller than 320 g, nothing breaks — the same filling simply spreads a little thinner or thicker and the log comes out longer or shorter. For the coating sugar, superfine or caster sugar dissolves and caramelizes most evenly, while demerara or turbinado gives a coarser, crunchier crust that can scorch at the edges if you are not watching. Keep the cinnamon at 1/4 teaspoon; past that it stops being a background warmth and becomes the flavor you taste. The powdered sugar is purely for looks — dust it just before serving, since it dissolves into the surface within an hour or two.
Make-Ahead, Storage, and Reheating
The filling can be stirred together up to 3 days ahead and kept covered in the refrigerator. Let it sit out for about 15 minutes before spreading, because cold filling tears chilled pastry. The shaping is the part really worth doing ahead: a wrapped log holds in the freezer, and the cut slices freeze even better, since you can pull out exactly as many as you need.
To freeze slices, cut the chilled log as usual and set the slices on a parchment-lined tray without letting them touch. Freeze until solid, then bag them. They keep for 2 weeks. Bake them straight from frozen — no thawing — and add 2 minutes to the total time, checking at the flip that the sugar on the outside is not darkening faster than the centers are setting.
Baked palmiers are at their best the day they are made. Stored in an airtight tin at room temperature they hold for about 3 days, but they lose their snap after the first day. Do not refrigerate them; the moisture in a fridge makes puff pastry limp rather than crisp. To bring them back, spread them on a sheet and warm them at 350 F (175 C) for 4 to 5 minutes, then let them cool completely on a rack — they crisp as they cool, not while they are hot. A toaster oven does the same job for a small batch. Never use a microwave. Baked palmiers also freeze well for about a month and can be re-crisped straight from frozen, adding a few minutes to the 350 F reheat.
Troubleshooting: Soggy Centers, Leaks, and Unrolling
A soft, bready center almost always means the filling went on too thick or the pastry was too warm when it went into the oven. The paste should be thin enough that you can still see the sheen of the dough through it, and it must stop 1/2 inch short of every edge — filling that touches the edge has nowhere to go but out. If a palmier comes out pale and heavy, it may simply be underbaked: done palmiers are deep amber and feel noticeably light when you lift one off the sheet, and the full 8 minutes plus 6 to 8 minutes is not a suggestion you can trim.
Unrolling and leaking are the same failure seen from two angles. Palmiers do not unroll because the fold came open; they unroll because the slices were not cold enough, so the butter had already softened before baking and the layers had no structure to hold the coil. Chilling the cut slices on the tray for 10 minutes before they go in solves most of it. If butter pools around the palmiers on the sheet, that is the same problem again: the butter is melting out instead of steaming inside the layers, and the result is fried, dense pastry. A dark nonstick pan makes the bottoms catch long before the tops caramelize, so use a light-colored aluminum sheet with parchment. If the bottoms are already darkening too fast at the flip, move the tray up a rack.
Uneven color across one tray is usually the oven, not the recipe — most ovens run hot in one corner. Rotate the tray when you flip at 8 minutes and check again 6 minutes later. Pale, barely-tan palmiers usually mean the oven is running cooler than the dial says; an inexpensive oven thermometer is worth more here than any other tool, because 400 F is hotter than most home ovens actually reach when set to 400 F. If the sugar on the parchment is blackening while the tops are still blonde, you have too much loose sugar on the board — shake the slices gently before they go in.
Serving Suggestions and Variations
Temperature changes the character of these entirely. Eaten warm from the rack, the centers are still slightly soft and the filling is fragrant; cooled completely, they are at their crispiest and the caramel is fully set. Either way they want something bitter alongside — black coffee, or a strong black tea — because the sugar coating is assertive. One log yields roughly two dozen slices, which is about right for a pot of coffee and four people, or for a cookie tin to take to someone else's house.
Small additions change them without upsetting the balance. The zest of half an orange stirred into the filling sharpens the apricot. A pinch of cardamom in place of the cinnamon takes them in a warmer, more perfumed direction, and a spoonful of toasted sliced almonds pressed into the paste adds a second texture against the caramel. Once the palmiers are fully cool, a thin drizzle of melted dark chocolate over the top cuts the sweetness and makes them look considerably more effortful than they were. For a larger version, slice the log 3/4 inch thick instead of 1/2 inch and add a couple of minutes to the bake; they will be chewier in the middle.
To double the batch, work with one sheet of pastry at a time and keep the second one in the refrigerator — two sheets softening on the counter at once is how the second batch ends up misshapen. Bake the trays one after another rather than on two racks, since a crowded oven steams the pastry instead of setting it. And if you want a savory version, the technique carries over: skip the sugar on the board, roll the pastry in finely grated parmesan instead, and swap the apricot filling for a sharp mustard and more cheese. It is a different cookie entirely, but the fold, the freeze, and the flip are identical.
Frequently asked questions
Can I use apricot jam instead of apricot preserves?
Yes, but texture matters. A smooth preserve spreads into the thin, even layer the palmiers need; a jam with visible fruit pieces will tear the chilled dough and leave lumps that keep the layers from sealing. Warm the jam briefly and press it through a sieve, or pulse it smooth, before you measure out the 120 g. If it is runnier than preserves, stir in an extra tablespoon of almond flour so the paste still holds together in the oven.
Do I really need to freeze the log for 30 minutes?
Yes — it is the difference between round, layered palmiers and flattened ones. The freezer firms the butter so a knife cuts through the coils instead of dragging them sideways. If you are short on time, 20 minutes in the freezer or about an hour in the refrigerator gets you close, but the slices will be slightly oval and the spirals less distinct. Chilling the cut slices for another 10 minutes on the tray covers you if the kitchen is warm.
What is the almond flour doing, and can I leave it out?
It is the thickener. Apricot preserves alone are wet enough to boil out of the folds during baking; the 60 g of almond flour absorbs that moisture and turns the preserves into a paste that stays where you spread it. Leave it out and you get leaky, soggy palmiers and a sticky baking sheet. You can swap it for the same weight of blanched ground almonds, but not for almond paste or marzipan, both of which contain sugar and would make the filling candy-like.
How do I keep baked palmiers crisp?
Keep them in an airtight tin at room temperature and eat them within about 3 days — they are best on day one. Refrigeration is what ruins them, because the moisture in a fridge softens the pastry. To revive a batch, spread the palmiers on a sheet and warm them at 350 F (175 C) for 4 to 5 minutes, then cool them completely on a rack; they firm up as they cool. A microwave will only make them chewy, and powdered sugar should wait until just before serving.
Why did my palmiers unroll or leak filling in the oven?
Both come from the same place: dough that was too warm, or a filling that was too generous. Slices that go into the oven soft have no structure to hold the coil, so they open up as the butter melts. Chill the cut slices on the tray for 10 minutes and bake them cold. For leaks, keep the filling thin — you should still see the dough through it — and stop 1/2 inch short of every edge so it has room to expand without spilling over.