Sable Cookies

 

I’ve stumbled onto something amazing: the most delicious, most tender, most must-keep-eating cookie that… don’t have chocolate or peanut butter in them! Unreal, I know! (although it should be noted they are made almost entirely out of the third ingredient in the holy trinity of baking ingredients: butter)

 

To be clear, I’m not saying that this is the only cookie I’ll ever eat again – for the obvious  lack of chocolate/PB reasons – but I am saying that they are amazing and addictive, despite the lack of chocolate or peanut butter. The cookies are called sables (aka French butter cookies) and are so delicious – buttery, delicate, light – and I swear, they kind of have the power to make your life feel a little better. Like, if everything else is crap, at least you’ve got these cookies. They will be added to my regular cookie rotation, to be sure.

 

 

The cookies come from Dorie Greenspan, so I should’ve known they would be delicious. Plus, she recommends using high-fat European butter, so it’s pretty clear from the get-go that we’ve got a good situation going on.

 

Here’s how to make some sables happen for yourself:

 

First, beat together your butter, then add the sugar and eggs, beating until creamy

 

 

After you add the flour, and pulse

 

 

then dump onto the counter

 

 

and then shape the dough into a ball and divide in half

 

 

Then roll the dough into a log, about 9 inches, or so, and chill in the fridge

 

 

Once chilled, paint the dough with an egg yolk, then roll in coarse sugar (it looks a little weird, I know)

 

 

 

Slice

 

 

 

and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet

 

 

 

And done!

 

 

Oh, I served these cookies with this chocolate ice cream… mmmm….

 

Dorie Greenspan’s Master Recipe for Sables

retrieved from strudelandstreusel.com

printer friendly version

makes about 50 cookies

 

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter (preferably high-fat, like Plugra), softened at room temperature

1/2 cup granulated sugar

1/4 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted before measuring

1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably sea salt 
2 large egg yolks, preferably at room temperature

2 cups all-purpose flour.

For the decoration (optional): 
1 egg yolk 
plus Crystal or dazzle sugar (I used turbinado – sold as Sugar in the Raw)

 

1. Working in a mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter at medium speed until it is smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars and salt and continue to beat until smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy, about 1 minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in 2 egg yolks, again beating until well blended.

 

2. Turn off the mixer, pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the mixer and pulse the mixer about 5 times at low speed for 1 or 2 seconds each time. Take a peek; if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, stir for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. If you still have some flour on the bottom of the bowl, stop mixing and use a rubber spatula to work the rest of it into the dough. (The dough will not come together in a ball — and it shouldn’t. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you’re aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy dough. When pinched, it should feel a little like Play-Doh.)

 

3. Scrape the dough onto a work surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long (it’s easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form the log). Wrap the logs well and chill them for at least 2 hours. The dough may be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.

 

4. When ready to bake, center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper and keep it at the ready.

 

5. To decorate the edges of the sables, whisk the egg yolk until smooth. Place one log of chilled dough on a piece of waxed paper and brush it with yolk (the glue), and then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with sugar. Trim the ends of the roll if they are ragged and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies.

 

6. Place the rounds on the baking sheet, leaving an inch of space between each cookie, and bake for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the halfway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top. Let the cookies rest 1 or 2 minutes before carefully lifting them onto a cooling rack with a wide metal spatula. Repeat with the remaining log of dough. (Make sure the sheet is cool before baking each batch.)

 

Lemon Sables Before mixing the butter and sugar together, pour the sugar in a bowl with the grated zest of 1 to 1 1/2 lemons. Work the zest and sugar together with your fingertips until the mixture is moist and aromatic, then cream it with the butter in the mixer.

 

Parmesan Sables Replace sugars with 3/4 cup very finely grated Parmesan added to the beaten butter. A few grains of fleur de sel may be gently pressed into the top of each sable before the baking sheet is slipped into the oven.

 

Posted on February 9, 2012
This entry was posted in cookies, desserts and tagged baking, butter, sugar, sweet.