This week's French Friday's with Dorie recipe is Cocoa Sables. Sweet, crisp, chocolatey little darling French cookies. The should be an accent over the "e". I've been trying to figure out how to create that character without much success. From here on, please pretend it's there. Sables were the very first recipe we made in pastry school. For those of you sick and tired of pastry school stories, please skip ahead. This is a good one though. Our class went to the very first demonstration where we carefully watched the chef make a variety of sable, or butter cookies. He stacked butter cookie dough on chocolate dough and made beautiful stripes, swirls and lunettes (eyeglasses.) One sable he called "dee -a -monde". The translator repeated the word Diamond. The name reflects the way that the tube of dough is brushed with egg and rolled in coarse sugar to make it look like it's rolled in diamonds. There were a few moments when I can think back and know they had me. This was one of those moments.
I used a block of bittersweet chocolate and chopped/grated it very fine. It added a lot to the cookie, and I would highly recommend it.
Back to school. When we got into the kitchen, we were introduced to weighing ingredients for the first time. The recipe called for 5 grams of salt. If we had thought about it, how much salt can there be in a cookie recipe? Well, we set off to the salt bin carrying mixing bowls that could have held 10 pounds of bread dough! We can back with what equaled about a teaspoon! We can laugh now. At the time, all business.
Dorie's recipe uses a creamage method, using room temperature butter and gently mixing in all the dry ingredients. I really liked adding the chopped chocolate for a little extra boost of chocolate taste. I don't have a lot of how-to pictures this week. Here's the dough sliced and ready for the oven.
The dough is rolled into logs and chilled. During the chilling time, I pulled them out a few times to reroll and reshape the logs. As the soft dough chills, it can get a flat bottom. Rerolling, helps make the roll even and not lopsided. The dough sliced easily. A few of the disks had to be schmoosed back together. The smell of the cookies baking a amazing! Here's a tip. When you can smell chocolate in the room, you can be sure that your dessert is almost done. I always wondered how the chefs knew that things were finished before the timer ever went off.
The Sable are so good. This is a great dough to have in the freezer to quickly slice and bake for an impromto dessert, or to satisfy a chocolate craving! No need to defrost, just slice and bake.
Have a great weekend, next week is Crab and Grapefruit Salad- curious?
