Apricot Walnut Palmiers

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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Spread the apricot walnut mixture in an even layer leaving a border on one edge.
4. 
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. 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.
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9. 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…

Tags: apricot, food, honey, puff pastry, unsulphured, vegetarian, walnuts