LAVENDER-WHITE CHOCOLATE SABLÉS
SOURCE: DORIE GREENSPAN. DORIE’S COOKIES.
Lavender blossoms, specifically dry culinary-grade flower buds, simultaneously impart sweet, floral, and woody fragrance notes and subtle citrus hints, which pair perfectly with the warm and cozy vanilla scent of white chocolate. Bind the seemingly odd couple into a buttery dough of Pâte Sablée, and the shortbread bakes into soothing and tantalizing cookies that can incite sensual delights for afternoon tea or positive afterthoughts from an evening dessert.
Ingredients
1/2 cup/100 grams sugar
2 teaspoons/5 grams culinary-grade lavender, ground to a coarse powder
2 1/3 cups/320 grams all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon/0.7 grams sea salt
1 cup/227 grams unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 teaspoon/5 mL pure vanilla extract OR vanilla bean paste
4 ounces/114 grams finely chopped premium-quality white chocolate
Specific Equipment
Stand mixer bowl
Stand mixer equipped with a paddle attachment
Wire whisk
Parchment paper
Rolling pin
Baking ring OR round cookie cutter with a diameter of 2 inches/5 cm
Tray lined with silicon baking sheet
2 well-buttered muffin tins
Wire rack
Makes about 45 pieces
Instructions
1. Place sugar and lavender in the stand mixer bowl and rub both ingredients together with fingers until the sugar has absorbed the fragrance of the lavender. Whisk in the flour and salt until well-blended.
2. Attach the bowl to the stand mixer equipped with a paddle attachment. Beat in pieces of the butter gradually under medium-low speed for 10 minutes or until dough has formed into moist clumpy curds that hold together when pinched. Beat in the vanilla and white chocolate and continue mixing until well-blended. Remove the dough from the bowl and divide in half.
3. Shape each half into a ball and press each ball into a disk.Place the disk-shaped dough between two sheets of parchment paper and roll the dough with a rolling pin to a thickness of 1/4 inch/0.64 cm. Slide the parchment paper-sandwiched dough onto a baking tray lined with silicon baking sheet. Repeat with the other disk-shaped dough and stack above the previous dough. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or freeze for at least 1 hour.
4. Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C.
5. Peel away the top sheet of parchment paper and cut the dough into 2-inch/5-cm rounds with a baking ring or cookie cutter. Drop each round into each well of the muffin tin until all wells of the muffin tin contain the dough. Save the scraps from each batch of dough and repeat Step 3.
6. Bake for 10 minutes and rotate the tins. Continue baking for another 6 to 8 minutes or until the cookies are firm to the touch and have pale tops. Remove the muffin tins from the oven and leave the cookies to cool for 10 minutes. Lift the sablés carefully out of the muffin tins and transfer them onto a wire rack to cool completely.
7. Repeat Steps 5 to 6 for the remainder of the dough, always using cool muffin tins, until all of the dough for baking have been exhausted.
