Elephant Ears

Hi everyone, welcome back to another blog post!

This week I’ve decided to make some variations on palmiers, also known as Elephant Ears! These were super easy to make and take no time at all to do, so work perfectly if you fancy baking something but have hardly any time to do it!

These are great as you can be as creative as you like when it comes to fillings, and work for both savoury and sweet! I’ve decided to do one of each, cheese and tomato for savoury and chocolate for sweet.

Of course these fillings are just suggestions so feel free to try them out or change them completely! Other fillings that I think would be amazing include:

Cheese and mixed herbs
Marmite (and cheese!)
Strawberry or raspberry jam
Pesto
Or just plain with some icing sugar dusted over the top

The list goes on…!

As you’ve probably guessed already, the animal for this week is the elephant! More specifically the Asian Elephant. So if you’d like to read some more about these amazing animals make sure you read until the end!

But first, let’s get onto this week’s recipe!

Recipe:

Ingredients:

Ready rolled puff pastry

Savoury filling:

2 tbsp vegetable oil
3 tbsp tomato ketchup
2-3 tsp tomato puree
Pinch of salt
1 tsp mixed herbs
1 tsp minced garlic

Sweet filling:

Nutella
Smarties (or other colourful chocolate)

Equipment:

Rolling pin
2 large baking trays

Method:

Firstly, preheat your oven to 200°C.
Next roll out your puff pastry into a large rectangle.
Prepare your filling. For the savoury simply mix all the ingredients into a small bowl. For the sweet you’ll need to crush the smarties, using a rolling pin.
Spread your chosen filling onto the puff pastry.
Start to roll the pastry (longer side) until you reach the centre and then repeat with the other side.
Cut slices a few centimetres thick and place onto the baking tray.
Place in the oven and bake for 10-15 minutes.

And that’s it! Super easy and quick. Happy baking!

Now onto this week’s animal, the Asian Elephant!

Asian Elephant – Elephas maximus

Elephants are probably one of the most recognisable animals on the planet and are the largest land animal. However Asian elephants are slightly smaller than African elephants and also have much smaller ears. These ears radiate heat in order to keep elephants cool, but they also love being in the water, using their trunks to suck up water and spray it over themselves.

Asian elephants are incredibly sociable animals and live in herds made up of females, led by the oldest. Male elephants, bulls, live on their own. Family is very important to elephants, as they are one of the only animals where grandmothers play an important role and help raise young. In fact when an elephant calf is born (after a 22 month gestation period!) the entire herd, as all the females are able to produce milk after the birth and help take care of the baby.

Asian elephants are found mostly in India and Southeast Asia, in grassy terrain and forest. Their habitat is under constant threat due to logging, agricultural and urban development. Because of this human-elephant conflict is a huge problem as elephants wander into farms causing crop damage. Another threat to the species is poaching. Elephants are poached for their tusks to sell in the ivory trade. All of these factors mean that Asian elephants are currently listed as Endangered on IUCN’s Red List and their population is decreasing.

Elephant Ears