In the meantime, preheat your oven to 160☌ (320☏). Place the tray in the freezer for the chocolate sables to firm up for 10 min. Put the chocolate chips back into place and use your hands to shape the slices back into round sables. It’s normal, a sable dough is crumbly and soft, so there is nothing to worry about. The slices might crumble a bit while cutting them with some chocolate chips falling off. Unwrap the dough, cut it into 5mm (0.2 in) slices and place on the prepared tray, leaving room to spread (but they won’t spread a lot). Line a baking tray with parchment paper and set aside. Place in the freezer to firm up for 20 min. Shape the ball into a log, roughly 5cm (2 in) wide, by rolling in on your counter. Press the dough into a ball with your hands, then wrap it loosely in a large piece of plastic wrap. Fold in the chocolate pieces evenly with a rubber spatula. Sift the dry ingredients into the mixing bowl and beat at the lowest speed until just incorporated. Use the lowest speed first until the sugar is incorporated then raise the speed to medium-high. In a large mixing bowl, cream the butter, sugar and salt together with a hand mixer for 2 min until smooth and fluffy. In a small bowl, mix the flour with the baking powder and cocoa powder. You can bake the chocolate sables straight out of the freezer, just add a couple more minutes of bake time.

Then keep in the freezer for up to a month. When the chocolate sables are frozen solid you can place them in a plastic container (or a freezer bag to save space). To freeze them, place the chocolate sables on a baking tray lined with baking parchment and place the tray in the freezer for 2 hours. Or, after you’ve cut the dough into slices and reshaped the chocolate sables with your hands, you can freeze the slices for up to a month. ➝ Can I prepare the chocolate sables in advance? You can keep the sable dough, as a roll wrapped in clingfilm and ready to be sliced, for up to 3 days in the fridge. I’m not very patient so if I can avoid having to rub my butter into flour for 5 min by hand, I will! Don’t worry the cookies are just as crumbly as what you would expect from chocolate sables. I took a quick shortcut with my chocolate sables since the butter and sugar are creamed together. Sable means sand in French and sablés were created in a town called Sablé-sur-Sarthe. They are simply made by mixing quickly flour, sugar and butter (and sometimes egg yolks) until a sandy texture is reached. Traditionally, sablés are crumbly round cookies with fluted edges. If these cookies are named chocolate sables, it’s because French shortbread cookies are called ‘sablés’. A tart shell made with sable pastry will be much crumblier than one made with shortcrust pastry. To make a traditional sable dough, first, sift the flour into a bowl with the sugar and then rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs. A sable dough is made of butter, sugar, and flour (ground nuts, cocoa powder or salt can also be added). ➝ What’s a sable dough? A sable dough is a type of pastry mainly used for tart shells. If you like your chocolate bakes for on the (adult) bitter side, feel free to use a higher percentage. For these chocolate sables, I didn’t want the taste to be overpowering so I used chocolate with a minimum content of 52% cocoa. Use quality dark chocolate but the percentage is up to you. Overall, these chocolate sables are a pretty easy and quick treat! To make the creaming process easier, wait for the butter to completely soften to room temperature for 1 hour before starting the recipe. I agree it doesn’t seem appealing but it helped me realize why I would pick a crispy cookie over a cakey one any day of the week. And also who can say no to a crumbly buttery cookie that melts in your mouth? In France, cookies are called biscuits, and biscuits are defined as ‘petits gâteaux secs’ aka small dry cakes. I like crispy cookies because they pair so well with a cup of tea or coffee (any dunkers out there?). Except, if you bake them from scratch they are 100000 times better! I’m an old-fashioned 25 years-old, what can I do? I want the type of cookies I grew up eating, the crispy type you would get from processed cookies bought at a supermarket. There, I said it! If I wanted cake, I would eat cake.

It might be a controversial statement but I’m not really into this all gooey-cakey-soft cookies craze.

Sable cookies