My expectations for Dorie's espresso chocolate sables were incredibly high. Coffee and chocolate are two of my favorite things, especially in combination. Shortbread (sables are a French shortbread) is simple, but executed correctly they are one of the most compulsively eatable cookies.
I still daydream about the triple espresso mousse brownies we used to make at the coffee shop I barista'd at in college. My hope was these would be as amazing, while requiring a fraction of the effort.
As I was reading about these cookies online (because how could anyone resist these cookies after seeing their picture in Dorie's Cookies), I was disappointed to see so many negative reviews of the recipe... multiple sites described a flavorless cookie that wasn't worth the investment or effort.
Having made (and eaten) Dorie's espresso chocolate sables, I believe I understand the negative reactions, and have some succinct advice on how to avoid a bad experience with this cookie.
1. Use high-quality, European-style butter. Supermarket butter is generally bland and flavorless - it is not the right choice for this butter-loaded sable.
2. Use high-quality bittersweet chocolate. It needs to pack enough of a flavor that it stands up to the espresso extract.
3. You must like coffee-flavored desserts. Not "hint of coffee", but full-on Coffee flavor. If you don't, use vanilla extract in place of the espresso extract (the powder+water). Caleb thinks this would make a better cookie.
4. Sables are crunchy. They are delicate, true, but the definition of sable is sand and these are a "sandy" cookie.
With those disclaimers out of the way, this is a fairly easy roll-chill-bake butter cookie. You blitz together the butter and sugar, whisk together the vanilla extract, finely chop a bunch of chocolate, sift together your dry ingredients, and that's basically it.
You're going to be rolling out the dough into a thin rectangle, so keep that in mind as you chop chocolate... don't be lazy otherwise you'll regret it later. The prep time is really minimal. Stop and taste the dough, because it's delicious. It would be amazing with some vanilla gelato.
Next, you're going to divide the dough into two equal balls, and roll each out to an approximate thickness of ¼''. If the chocolate wasn't chopped finely enough, it will make rolling the dough out more challenging. Do not stop after making the dough and tell yourself you'll roll it out after a rest in the fridge. You want to do it now while the dough is still room-temperature and pliable. If you wait, it will crack and resist shaping/rolling.
Finally, after the ease of making the dough, the relative ease of rolling it out into sheets, followed by at least 3 hours (or up to there days) chilling in the refrigerator, it's time to bake. Dorie uses a 2-inch round cutter to punch out the circular shortbread and bakes the circles in a muffin tin to keep the shape confined and allow the sables to puff up a bit.
I didn't get as many cookies out of my recipe as Dorie did (32 instead of 40) and I didn't need to bake my cookies as long as the recipe originally stated (14-16 instead of 18-20). Also, my cookies didn't puff up at all- they really looked nothing like the thick sables in the cookbook photo. That being said, they were delicious.
They're crunchy, but tender, with a jolt of coffee flavor married with the undertones of chocolate and rich salty butter. These espresso chocolate sables are also small enough that they make eating multiple seem like a great idea.
Slightly modified from Dorie's Cookies
Espresso Chocolate Sables
Ingredients
- 1 ½ tablespoons instant espresso
- 1 tablespoon boiling water
- 2 sticks (8 ounces; 226 grams) unsalted butter cut into chunks, at room temperature
- ⅔ cup (80 grams) confectioners’ sugar
- ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
- pinch ground cinnamon
- ¾ teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 2 cups (272 grams) all-purpose flour
- 4 ounces (113 grams) bittersweet chocolate, finely chopped
Instructions
- In a small heatproof bowl, dissolve the instant espresso in the boiling water. Set aside to cool to lukewarm.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or using a handheld mixer or your amazing arm strength), beat the butter, sugar, salt, and cinnamon together on medium speed for 2-3 minutes until fluffy, scraping down the bowl as needed.
- Stir in the vanilla and espresso/water liquid on low speed. With the mixer off, add all the flour at once, then pulse the mixer to begin incorporating the flour. After several pulses, mix on low speed until the flour is almost incorporated. Scrape down the bowl, add the chopped bittersweet chocolate, and fold in until evenly distributed.
- Turn the dough out onto a clean countertop or work surface and divide it in half. Shape each half into a disk. Working with one piece of dough at a time, sandwich the dough disk between two pieces of parchment paper, then roll the dough out to a thickness of ¼ inch. Still sandwiched, slide the dough onto a baking sheet and then into the freezer for at least one hour, or the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. (It's fine to stack the rolled out dough halves on top of each other on the baking sheet).
- Preheat the oven to 325ºF with one rack in the center of the oven. Butter or spray two regular muffin tins. Find a 2-inch diameter round cookie cutter or a roughly 2-inch diameter drinking glass for cutting out the cookies, and dust the circumference with flour to avoid stickage..
- Working with one sheet of dough out of the freezer/fridge at a time, peel off the top piece of paper, then cut the dough out into 2-inch rounds using the cutter/glass and place the rounds into the muffin tins. The dough will not quite fill the bottom of the mold -- it will expand as it bakes.
- Save scraps from both dough halves. Rechill these and reroll to salvage as much dough as possible.
- Bake the cookies in the muffin tins for 14 to 17 minutes, or until they feel firm to the touch and have some color. If you are using dark colored muffin tins, they will take less time (14 minutes). Transfer the muffin tins to a cooling rack, leaving the cookies in the tins for 10 minutes, then removing the cookies from the tin interior to cool completely.
- Continue with the remainder of the dough, if you only baked one sheet, always using cool tins.
- This dough can be wrapped well and refrigerated for up to 2 days or frozen up to 2 months. It's fine to cut out cookies and bake the dough directly from the freezer. Once baked, these espresso chocolate sables will keep well-covered at room temperature for about 5 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months.
