French sablé cookies are essentially butter cookies, a combination of not much more than butter, flour, sugar and perhaps the occasional egg yolk. Though sablés require few basic ingredients and are relatively simple to make, they are not simple to perfect. I know, because I have tried countless recipes and made countless batches...the cookies are tasty and crumbly, but I could not bring myself to call them the "perfect sablé". The cookies usually turn out slightly soft in the center and that hallmark sand-like quality is too subtle, not quite the will-fall-apart-once-bitten texture I was hoping for.
Last night, however, was a turning point in my conquest for the perfect sablé. I was getting ready to attempt yet another batch when a light bulb suddenly went off in my head. What if I used FROZEN BUTTER? I always use frozen butter for my tart and pie crusts, because it yields a beautiful flaky crumbly crust. So if I used it in a cookie, wouldn't it also yield a nice crumbly sablé? (It did.)
So here it is, the (dare I say it) perfect sablé! Wonderful sandy texture (I suppose this is the only case where "sandy" is a good quality in a food item), crispy and crumbly all the way through. I was so ecstatic in my triumph that I made three batches and flavored each one differently!
When it comes to sablés, I always make extra, as the dough stores so well in the freezer, I can always have fresh cookies on hand, even when I am dead tired!
Hazelnut Sablé
makes about 80 cookies
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup vanilla sugar (or regular granulated sugar)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons butter, cut into small pieces and frozen for at least 1 hour
2 egg yolks
1 tablespoon ice water
2/3 cup hazelnuts, roughly chopped
In the bowl of a food processor, combine flour, sugar and salt. Pulse a few times until blended. Scatter frozen butter pieces into flour mixture.
Pulse until butter is thoroughly distributed and resembles coarse crumbs, about 30 seconds.
Add in egg yolks and ice water, pulse a few more times until dough just starts to come together. Stir in chopped hazelnuts.
Turn out mixture onto counter top and gather dough together.
Divide dough into four even sections and roll into logs, making sure there are no hollow pockets inside each log.
Wrap in plastic film and freeze at least 30 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350°F.
Slice dough into 1/4 inch slices and place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. They can be placed quite close together as the cookies do not expand much during baking. Bake for 17 minutes.
Cool completely on wire rack.
Cookies can be stored for 1 week in an airtight container at room temperature.
Lemon Sablé
makes 80 cookies
Same ingredients and procedure as hazelnut sablé, with the following substitutions:
replace chopped hazelnuts with zest of one lemon
replace ice water with one tablespoon of cold lemon juice
Instead of adding the lemon zest at the end, I mixed it into the sugar, rubbing the zest between fingertips with the sugar until fragrant, then added it to the dry ingredients.
Black Sesame Sablé
makes 80 cookies
Same ingredients and procedure as hazelnut sablé, with the following substitutions:
replace chopped hazelnuts with 1/4 cup black sesame seeds
Instead of stirring the seeds in at the end, like the hazelnuts, I added it at the beginning with the sugar and flour so that it could blend thoroughly in the dough. To enhance the black sesame flavor, I toasted them lightly, then ground them finely with a mortar and pestle. The food processor will not grind them much, so the seeds are too small.
My very precise recipe...
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