Some days are a little more morose than others, and lately my mood has been affected by many things and partly by the San Francisco weather…I hate to talk about weather changes, because I think it is a little annoying to hear, and it sounds like “old bored people’s” discussions and if I look at last year posts around this time of year, it was the same thing…the fog rolling in. Everyone talks about the weather in this city because it changes so fast and every district or neighborhood has its own micro climate…and honestly when buying a house in the city you want to make sure you are not in a “fogged in” area, if you do, you better love wearing ski jackets in June. So when it rains, or you need a little quick fix to cheer you up, make palets, they’re easy to make and so delicious!

You might not be familiar with France and its beautiful and picturesque rainy North Western region : la Bretagne (Brittany), they have amazing seafood specialties and many others like this palet breton.

Palet breton is a dry cookie made with a pâte sablée and demi-sel butter. Brittay is famous for galettes bretonnes, palets and other buttery cookies (and crêpes of course). You can find so many brands of those delicious cookies in the supermarkets, so being far away from French supermarkets, I figured I better learn how to make them if I ever want to eat some.

Usually palet breton is about 1.5 com thick, so a little thicker than the ones I made. As any “dry cookie” they’re delicious and very enjoyable with a tea or coffee, or as a little snack. This time, I wanted to “dress them up”, turn them into a little bite as a dessert…and add some extra crunch to it, by adding pistachios.  if you don’t have butter demi-sel, use regular butter and add fleur de sel.

Ingredients for about 18 palets

for the palets

• 7 oz (or 200 g) flour
• 3.52 oz (or 100 g) butter demi-sel, cubed
• 2.82 oz (or 80 g) sugar
• 2 yolks
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 2.11 oz (or 60 g raw pistachios, roughly chopped

for the mascarpone cream

• 7 tbs mascarpone
• 7 tbs fromage blanc
• sugar to taste

for the raspberry coulis

• 14 oz (or 400 g) raspberries
• 5.29 oz (or 150 g sugar) or more if the raspberries are not very sweet
• 1 tsp lemon juice

Preparation

In a mixing container, mix flour and baking powder. Add butter and mix carefully from the tips of your fingers incorporating it to the flour mixture. Separately mix yolks with sugar and vanilla extract and add to the flour.  Form a uniform ball. Spread with a rolling pin in a 1.5 cm sheet. Cut with a small cookie cutter or glass (the cookies are usually thick and small, about 5 cm diameter). Bake in a parchment paper or silpat for about 15 min at 360F. Let them cool.

For the mascarpone cream, just combine all ingredients together.

For the coulis, combine all ingredients in a blender. Filter coulis through a sieve to remove the seeds.

Place a generous amount of mascarpone cream on top of a palet. Add raspberries and top it with coulis and chopped pistachios.