Puff pastry is any baker’s (and mom’s) best friend. It comes in frozen so it’s easy to always have on hand, and after it is thawed can be used to not only create desserts but can be used to make simple but delicious dinner and lunch treats. Inevitably, if you are cutting out shapes from the sheets, you’ll have leftovers. What to do with the leftover puff dough scraps? Leftover dough palmiers is a great idea.

If you’ve never had a palmier, you are missing something good. Palmiers are one of those wonderful and crispy treats that require only a couple of ingredients: sugar folded into puff pastry sheets. But they can quickly turn savory, too. Palmiers also create delicious appetizers or amuse bouche when things like nuts, green onions, cracked pepper, and cheese are folded into the rolled out puff pastry.

Here is a recipe from Manu Feildel that makes great use of puff pastry scraps, Leftover Pastry Palmiers. I use the same technique but have used regular sugar in the past to roll the puff dough palmiers into. I think the powdered sugar is a great idea. Just remember that when reusing scraps of puff pastry to always layer them one on top of the other rather than just bunching them up into a ball and then trying to roll it out. Puff pastry dough is composed of many individual layers and to keep the dough from getting too tough, and to keep the layers, don’t try to form it into a round disk like a pie dough, just roll it out. Like in the video below.

“Palmier on plate” by barnimages.com is licensed under CC 2.0.