Wow- I have a blog? Really? I nearly forgot. My life has been completely turned around- in a good way- but turned around nonetheless. So the big news is our new abode. Historic firehouse turned loft in beautiful Lowertown St. Paul. Our lovely capitol city. We will miss Northeast Minneapolis, but never fear, we still own our house, so we don't have to really say goodbye, not yet.
My family does a make or bake gift exchange, which is easy for my crafty sister and sisters-in-law, but buying is much easier for me. One year I made Sables- a French Butter cookie that was amazing. This is actually a very simple recipe, but this was before I did any baking or cooking, so I was pretty proud of myself.
I decided to do this again. I've been asked for the recipe so many times, I had the wherewithal to document the process so I could post it here. My life is coming back together after all.
I must confess, this recipe is not my own. It came to me through our favorite food magazine Cooks Illustrated. Many of you know about this gem, but if you don't you must get a subscription.
These are very special butter cookies, each one literally crumbles in your mouth leaving a buttery, slightly sweet taste with the smallest hint of salt. Sandwich some chocolate or lemon honey between two of those cookies and they are worthy enough to be given as a gift. So that's what I did.
There is a secret ingredient, discovered through the rigorous scientific method employed by the America's Test Kitchen crew of Cooks Illustrated. The ingredient is hard boiled egg yolk crumbled into the batter. That's it. One little egg yolk makes all the difference. I never would have guessed. Which is why you should order the magazine.
Sables (French Butter Cookies)
recipe makes about 20 sandwich cookies
Ingredients:
1 large egg
10 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1/3 c granulated sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 c all purpose flour
1 large egg white lightly beaten with 1 tsp water
4 tsp turbinado sugar aka raw sugar
3 1/2 ounces of chopped dark or milk chocolate
Lemon honey or curd.
1. Hard boil the egg by placing it in a pan, covered with water, bring to a boil, cover and remove from heat and let sit for 10 minutes. Fill a small bowl with ice water. Remove the egg from the hot water and place it in the ice water. Leave for 5 minutes, peel the egg and discard the white (or eat it with salt- waste not). Press the hard yolk through a fine mesh strainer into small bowl.
2. Using a stand mixer with paddle or food processor: beat butter, granulated sugar, salt and cooked egg yolk on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping as needed. Reduce speed to low, add the vanilla and mix until incorporated. Stop mixer or processor, add flour and mix until just combined- about 30 seconds. With a rubber spatula, press dough into a ball.
3. Divide the dough in half and shape each piece into a log about six inches long and 1 3/4" diameter. Wrap each log in parchment paper and twist each side to seal. Like this.
Tip: the smoother you get the dough rolled, the more perfectly round your cookies will be. To do this, twist one end first and set it upright on the counter, pressing the dough by tapping it a few times, so it settles evenly. We also ended up using our sushi mat to roll them tight.
Chill dough for about 2 hours in your refrigerator. 45 minutes in the freezer will do as well. Or you can do what I did, which is throw it in the fridge and go to bed.
4. Arrange your oven racks to the upper middle and lower middle positions and pre-heat your oven to 350*.
Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Unwrap your dough and using a chef's knife, slice dough for sandwich cookies into 1/8" thick slices. Rotate the dough as you slice so the cookies stay round.
As you can see, mine aren't perfect, which is okay, since they still turned out fabulously. I attempted the pretzel shape, which I found much easier the last time I did this. To do this, take two of the cut round cookies and smush together into a ball. Roll the dough into a 6" long rope and form the pretzel shape, one side at a time. This ended up to be too much work- they kept falling apart- you can see I gave up after 8 took about 15 minutes. The sandwich cookies are way easier.
5. Using a pastry brush, brush half the cookies with the egg white mixture and sprinkle the cookie with turbinado sugar. Place in the oven for about 10-13 minutes, until the centers are pale golden brown with slightly darker edges. Switch and rotate the baking sheets in the oven halfway through. Remove from the oven, let cool for 5 minutes on the baking sheets and then transfer to a rack to cool completely.
6. Place the chopped chocolate in a small bowl and microwave on half power for 1-2 minutes and let it cool slightly. The cookies with the sugar are for the top of the sandwiches.
Once the cookies are cooled, spoon some chocolate on the bottom cookie...
...top with the sugared cookie, slightly off center so the chocolate shows a bit.
Just for variety, I also heated some lemon honey I bought at Byerly's, you could also use lemon curd. The honey hardens when cooled, so it worked very well for this purpose.
I repeated the process with the lemon.
The finished product...plates of cookies!
See? Gift worthy after all. Happy New Year!
