This is my take on a baklava-inspired puff pastry sweet appetizer… I wanted to do something completely nutty in the filling, but taking advantage of the unsulfured dried fruits available when I travel to the US, I decided to look for a recipe using dried fruit.
I started out with Giada’s Apricot Walnut Phyllo cups, but to make it easy on me, I would do palmiers out of puff pastry. I usually do not use orange zest in my cooking because I find it too bitter for my taste, but the crowd seemed to like it a lot. It brought out the apricot taste even more.
APRICOT WALNUT PALMIERS
1 1/2 cups dried apricots, unsulfured preferably, chopped a bit 1/2 cup toasted walnuts, chopped 1/4 cup honey 1 tablespoon orange zest, from 1 large orange, plus more for garnish, optional, 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice 2 sheets puff pastry, thawed
- In the bowl of a food processor mix together the dried apricots, walnuts, honey, orange juice and zest. Pulse a few times so it creates a choppy mixture.
- Open the puffed pastry (which comes folded in three). Place some flour onto a clean surface and flour the rolling pin too. Roll out the pastry so that it loses the creases where the folds were.
- Spread the apricot walnut mixture in an even layer leaving a border on one edge.
- Start rolling from the farthest edge from the border you left without filling. Roll the pastry onto itself until you create a log. If you prefer to make them in palmier form, roll them from two opposites sides until the 2 rolls meet somewhere in the middle.
- Repeat with the second pastry. Place logs in the fridge covered with a moist paper towel for about 10-15 minutes or until you’re ready to bake them. This is important for the pastry to harden a bit again. It’ll be easier to cut if the pastry is cold than if it is at room temp.
- Slice the logs into ½ inch pieces. Place onto a baking sheet. I put some organic sugar on top, but I did not love how those turned out, but I forgot to take a pic without it.
- Bake in a 425F oven for about 10-12 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden delicious.
I suggest that if you have leftovers, heat them back a bit in a toaster oven… This will soften the apricots in the filling, which tend to harden when they’re colder.
Next time… I promise to make the nut only mixture I envisioned originally. But these ones were a nice twist on my original idea…
