Cookbook review by Tracey Zabar
This classic cookbook, written by my amazing baker-friend, is full of all sorts of recipes and tips. It’s time to start baking your holiday cookies. First up: this ultimate, simple, sugary cookie. Then bake the chocolate spice cookies. They will whip up quickly. After that, his decorated gingerbread cookies, the chocolate version of the sablés, and a few dozen fig bars and hermits. Fill tins to send off to your loved ones and be sure to save one for yourself.
Recipe excerpted with permission from How to Bake by Nick Malgieri (Dover Books)
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• Form the dough into a cylinder on wax or parchment paper, or press it into a small pan to be cut into rectangular bars before slicing.
• Always chill the dough until it is firm, to avoid having the cookies distort in shape while being cut.
• Rotate the cylinder while cutting, so it doesn’t continuously get pressed from the same direction.
• Bake the cookies while they are still cool.
VANILLA SABLÉS
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
¼ cup sugar
Pinch of salt
1 egg yolk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons unbleached all purpose flour
Two cookie sheets or jelly-roll pans lined with parchment or foil
ABOUT 36 COOKIES
These cookies may be varied infinitely with additions of nuts and/or dried and candied fruits to the dough.
Sablé means “sandy” in French, referring to the crumbly texture of the cookies.
1. In a mixer bowl, beat the butter with the sugar and salt until the mixture is very light, about 5 minutes on medium speed. Beat in the yolk, then the vanilla extract. Remove from the mixer. Sift the flour over and stir in.
2. Shape the dough into an 8-inch-long cylinder in a sheet of parchment paper. Chill until firm.
3. Set racks at the middle and upper thirds of the oven and preheat to 325 degrees.
4. Slice the cylinder of dough every ¼ inch and arrange the slices on the prepared pans.
5. Bake for 18 to 20 minutes, until the cookies are firm and very light golden.
6. Cool on the pans.
Storage: Store the cookies in a tin or other tightly sealed container.
VARIATIONS
Moisten the outside of the cylinder with egg white and roll in cinnamon-sugar or coarse sugar before slicing and baking.
Add 6 ounces (1½ cups) chopped nuts to the dough before shaping.
Add ½ pound very green blanched pistachios to the dough before shaping.
Add ¼ pound each rinsed and quartered candied cherries and chopped nuts to the dough before shaping.
