Loving the Sablés...Still

My newest sablé flavor of choice is vanilla.  

I used my favorite sablé recipe as a starting off point (still Amanda Hesser's lemon sables).  I cut out the lemon, and instead added vanilla bean and Nielsen-Massey vanilla extract.  The leftover vanilla pod I stuck in about a cup of sugar.  The resulting vanilla sugar coated the outside of the sablés for an extra punch of vanilla.  

They have the same delightful sandy texture of the lemon, and the sweet intrigue of pure vanilla.  All around an excellent cookie. 

Valentine's Cookies

(Yes we're talking Sablés, again)

This is a Dorie Greenspan recipe for Linzer Sablés.  These cookies are traditionally made for Christmas.  I think they're quite perfect for Valentine's Day, withe red jam and a heart window.  The dough is equal parts ground almonds and flour, as well as your normal cookie ingredients.  Just like traditional roll outs, the dough is chilled before flattening and cutting out the shapes.

The most important thing is that you have two heart shaped cookie cutters in the same shape but differing sizes.  One has to be small enough that it will fit inside the larger one while leaving you enough dough space that the cookie won't just fall apart.  The other important thing to remember is that you need equal numbers of plain hearts and windowed hearts.  Once that is done, they're ready to bake.

When the cookies have been baked and cooled, they are ready for assemble.  I made two kinds of jam for these linzers, with fruit that was otherwise going to go bad.  One is a strawberry balsamic jam, the balsamic cuts the sweetness of the strawberries nicely while still complementing the flavors.  The second was a basic cranberry jam.  (These are adult cookies, meant to surprise with the sweet and sour combination.)  

After sandwiching the jam between the two cookies, a little sprinkling of powdered sugar, you have a beautiful treat for your Valentine.  A platter of these cookies is really spectacular. 

Again With the Sablés

I know, I know, again.  I'm sorry, but really they're great cookies.

This batch of sablés are chocolate with sea salt.  The dough is the crumbliest of the different recipes I've tried.  In the mixing bowl I thought it would never hold together.  With determination and some quality hands it came together just find.  Equally challenging was slicing the dough before baking.  I lost a couple.  But after some practice I learned a cutting technique that proved quite successful.  (Support the slice with one hand while cutting with the other.)

All that extra maneuvering was worth it for the best in sandy texture.  With dark chocolate chunks, plus sweet and savory thanks to the sea salt, this recipe is for sure a keeper.  One of the favorite sablés.

Brown Butter Sablés

As I sat down to write this, I realized that I've been writing about my parents a lot lately.  Yesterday my mom and doughnuts, today my dad and cookies.  Why?  Because food is love, at least for me.

So, to celebrate my dad's recent retirement, and his surprise party that I missed.  We sent him Brown Butter Sablés, which my honey found a recipe for at SmittenKitchen.com.  Yes, we're still obsessed with sables.  Yes we're trying every recipe we can find.  And yes, I'll probably write about another kind next week.  Sorry.  But you have to try these cookies.

Actually this particular recipe was not my favorite.  I love brown butter.  It has such a rich, nutty flavor far beyond regular butter.  I actually have recently become obsessed and have started using it in cookies and cakes in place of regular butter.  So, you can imagine how excited I was about these cookies.  They sound wonderful.

I'm not sure what it is I found disappointing.  Perhaps I built them up too much in my head.  But the finished cookies weren't as special as I expected.  They were too sweet, with not as much complexity as I expected.  I think a little extra salt would have added intrigue.  My honey, though, loved them.

Sablés: A Special Cookie

The sablé is a very special cookie.  I'm not sure what it is exactly, the sandy texture, the rich butteriness, or the perfect half-dollar size.  Regardless this is a cookie that has a lot going for it.  I first encountered them while visiting Dijon, France, where sables were elevated beyond topic to subject--with twenty or more different kinds.


I forgot about them for awhile.  My interest was re-invigorated when I decided to make Amanda Hesser's Lemon Sablé from her book, Cooking for Mr. Latte.  (Her book, by the way, is purely delightful.  A must read if you eat and are a woman.)

Since Hesser's Lemon Sablés, I've taken up trying all sorts.  The latest experiment were cinnamon.  The recipe, supposedly David Bouley's favorite, were slightly disappointing.  Don't get me wrong, they're still great cookies.  But the wow factor is missing a little bit.  There are a couple differences between the Hesser and Bouley recipes, the most important, I believe is Bouley's uses half the egg of Hesser's and uses whole eggs instead of just the yolk as Hesser does.  There are other differences but I believe it is the yolk that elevates Hesser's recipe to sublime.

Next try will be cinnamon instead of lemon in Hesser's sablé recipe.  When it works, it works.

Will you...?

My non-working life is now consumed with the fluff and puff of bridal magazines. (This is, of course, a self-indulgent choice I have made.) One bridal magazine referenced a web site where you can buy a cookie to ask your flower girl. I loved the idea, and decided to expand it to bridesmaids too. And to do it all myself.

For the bridesmaids I decided on lemon sablés. They are one of my favorite cookies right now, and they're perfect for decorating. So I made each cookie one word in the phrase "Will you be my bridesmaid?" Seems that it's worked too, I'm two-for-two.


Remembering my childhood fascination with the beautiful colors and daintiness of petit fours, I decided to make them for the flower girl. A new cake decorating book I'm working my way through has the recipe, so this was the perfect excuse. They turned out wonderfully. Little squares of feminine perfection just as I remembered.