Pink Praline Palmiers with Krushchev Dough

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Moving on from yesterday’s Krushchev Cheese Rolls, here’s what I did with the other half of the dough.

Last year at London’s Food Blogger Connect conference, my friend Pam of The Cooking Ninja gave me a bag of pralines roses, a sugary speciality of France’s Massif Central.

I’ve been toying with how to use them ever since. There was no danger of me eating them as they were, for these little red ruby babies are harder than any tooth. Should you be tempted to chew, you will come a cropper.

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You smash them up and scatter them over things before baking and afterwards you get these wonderful pomegranate coloured fragments of sugar on top. Each rock is meant to have an almond inside but in my sample, only 50% of them had one. (I wasn’t using the nuts anyway.)

Truth be told, pink pralines don’t taste of much but since they bring such an amazing day-glo shade of nail varnish-like brightness, who cares?

The pink pralines are less brittle after cooking, the sugar softens and the pieces turn to a grainier fudge-like texture.

These aren’t “palmiers” in the biscuit sense but I thought it would be fun to roll the dough into these heart shapes for Valentine’s week so they’re palmier shaped.

Where to buy pink praline

Assuming you don’t have friends in the Massif Central, pink pralines can be found online here although these 500g bags are such a huge quantity and costly at £19.99 I suggest you find a few foodie friends to split them with. Since they’re sugar though, they have a long shelf life (ok maybe you would want to pick the almond out if you’d had them toooo long) and as they’re so scarce in the UK they would be quite a talking point if you used them.

Praline makes a pretty decoration on all kinds of breads, cakes and desserts so you would no doubt find plenty of uses for it.

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Print Recipe

Pink Praline Palmiers Hearts With Krushchev Dough

Makes around 30-40 hearts - although I recommend you split the dough and use half for my Krushchev Cheese Rolls that use same dough. Or tear a third off to make a 10 inch pizza base.

Course: Baking, Dessert, Snack

Cuisine: French Style

Keyword: Krushchev dough, pink pralines

Servings: 32 hearts

Ingredients

• 7 g dried yeast sachet
• 10 g salt
• 250 ml milk cold from fridge
• 150 g butter unsalted, cubed and room temperature (not melted)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 500 g plain flour with extra for rolling
• 4-5 French pink pralines smashed into bits
• 1 egg yolk for glazing - thinned with a few drops of water and vegetable oil

Instructions

• In a large bowl, add the milk, butter, sugar and sift the flour on top. Mix with an electric mixer equipped with the dough hooks till all the ingredients are combined and soft dough forms.
• Cover the bowl with an airtight lid or plastic wrap and place in the fridge overnight. The dough becomes firm in the fridge (since the butter goes firm) but it does rise slowly, not as much as some doughs but it does rise.
• The next morning, preheat the oven to 180c or gas mark 4.
• Dust your work surface with a little flour and roll the dough into a 3mm thick rectangle. Cut it lengthwise and widthwise to smaller or bigger rectangles. Keep the dough cold - work with it as soon as you take it from the fridge. If necessary, divide into two or three parts and place the ones you're not using in the fridge while you are forming the rest.
• Cut the dough into strips around 20cm long and roll up from each end meeting half way then pinch a point to give a heart shape. Lay on a lined baking sheet and paint with your egg glaze. Scatter with smashed up praline.
• Bake for around 15 minutes or until golden brown.

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