Palmiers

Prepare the Dough
Mix all ingredients together with an electric stand mixer or dough attachment.

Remove the dough from the mixer when it is forming a ball. It should take approximately 30 seconds to 1 minute depending on flour quality and mixer speed. The dough ball will be a bit sticky so add a bit of flour around to form a nice and smooth ball surface. Do not knead the dough again. It should not be over kneaded.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough into a large rectangle - about 2 cm thick. The technique is to beat each edge of the dough with the roller to keep a rectangle shape when rolling. Do not cut the dough as a rectangle as you need the whole quantity of dough and a certain thickness.

Folding Steps
Fold the two ends of the rectangle over it to completely encased the dough. Rotate right by 90C and roll out the dough again. This is what we called the first ‘turn’. (You will have to do it four times!).

Roll out into a rectangle again. Proceed to the same folding and rotate left by 90C.
Repeat these steps 2 times. You will have to do 4 turns in total. Wrap the rectangle of dough with plastic wrap and store in the fridge for 30 minutes.

Form the Biscuits
Remove the plastic wrap and roll out the dough into a rectangle. This time do not hesitate to cut the edge with a sharp knife. The dough should be really thin about 0.3/0.5cm thick.
Keep the cutting edge to form another dough ball that you can re use to create more biscuit.

The bigger the rectangle is the bigger the biscuit size will be - roughly a rectangle of 15cm width x 30cm length.

Spread Chelsea Caster Sugar and cinnamon (optional) over the rectangle. The rectangle lengthwise direction should be in front of you before folding. Then imagine that you will have to fold the width 4 times. So if the total width is about 15cm you will have to fold by 4cm each time.

When you have folded each side 2 times you still have a rectangle of dough in front of you but less width as it is folded. Brush the top of the dough with a pastry brush dipped in the beaten eggs. Add a teaspoon of water in the beaten eggs to avoid a too yellowish colour when cooking.

Fold again to obtain a dough cylinder and keep the folded cylinder into the freezer for 10 minutes. That is a really important step if you want to be able to cut them easily. Prepare a baking sheet. Do not cover with baking paper.

Preheat the oven at 180C. Remove the dough cylinder from the freezer and cut slices – about 0.5 cm thick. Do not cut thicker slices or you will loose the crispy taste of the biscuit.

Roll the slice into a bowl of Chelsea Caster Sugar to cover all the biscuit surface.
Put the slices on the baking sheet – on their side.
Apply a pressure with your hand to squeeze the slice onto the baking tray. Do not be afraid to press it has to be flat. If not the biscuit will be too puffy.
Sometimes the layers of dough unstick from others when you apply pressure. Use your fingers to gently bring the layers together. You do not want any air between layers or the biscuit will break when it is cooked.

Shape the palmiers with your fingers by pulling them a bit on the outside. Refer to photo. Cook 12 minutes (6 minutes on each side) or until the border of the biscuit is brown. The color of the middle should stay a bit lighter. If not, the biscuit will be to crispy. It should be really crispy on the edge and a bit less in the middle so the cooking time is really important to preserve the taste.