Shortbread Jam Cookies with a Streusel Topping

Shortbread jam-filled cookies with a streusel topping....  French vanilla sablé dough topped with jam and ringed with a buttery cinnamon vanilla streusel. 

My favorite type of cookie is anything shortbread or sablé. Some of my favorites include pecan butterscotch shortbreads, hazelnut shortbreads, cornmeal sablés, and lemon vanilla shortbreads. 

Peanut Brownie Sablés

These peanut brownie sablés are the delicious result from combining a peanut butter shortbread dough with a brownie dough, and throwing in some chopped roasted peanuts for a little crunch.

These peanut brownie sablés are rich, peanut-y, and super chocolate-y.

Easy Slice and Bake Lemon Shortbread Cookies

These easy slice and bake lemon shortbread cookies possess the crumbly melt-in-your-mouth texture of traditional Scottish shortbread.

The dough for these lemon shortbread cookies takes just 10 minutes to measure and mix. Once you've mixed the dough, you wrap it and refrigerate or freeze it, where the dough sits ready to slice and bake when you have a cookie emergency.

Spiced Pumpkin Sablés with Pumpkin Seed Streusel

These Spiced Pumpkin Sablés begin with a cinnamon sablé, are topped with a pumpkin and cream cheese mixture, and then sprinkled with an amazing pumpkin seed streusel. 

These cookies begin with a butter cookie dough, then a layer of pumpkin cream cheese, and finally a layer pumpkin seed streusel.

Espresso Chocolate Sablés

These Espresso Chocolate Sablés are filled with the rich flavor of coffee and chocolate, and have a wonderful crumbly texture. 

Sablés you ask?  A sablé is the French shortbread! It's just fancier because of the name... and maybe a little more grown up.

Chocolate Hazelnut Sablés

I'm pretty excited about these Chocolate Hazelnut Sablés.

First, I figured out how to put the accent over the "é."

Second, I was able to peel these hazelnuts so easily this time! I toasted them in a 325 degree F toaster oven for about 15 minutes, shaking the pan every 5 minutes (I actually started with frozen hazelnuts). Once I pulled the pan from the oven, I covered the hazelnuts with a paper towel, and started rubbing them together in the pan while they were still warm. In no time at all, the hazelnuts were peeled.**

These Chocolate Hazelnut Sablés may look like your average chocolate cookie, but the chocolate is very bittersweet, and the taste is quite sophisticated.

They are perfect with a glass of milk, a cup of coffee, or a glass of cabernet.

Chocolate Hazelnut Sablés

Makes about 55 cookies.

Ingredients

1 C hazelnuts, roasted and peeled**

1 C granulated sugar

2 tsp espresso powder disolved in 1 1/2 T warm water

5 ounces bittersweet (60 to 70 per cent) chocolate, chopped. 

6 T Dutch process cocoa powder

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 3/4 C all purpose flour

1 C cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

Instructions

1. In the bowl of a food processor with the metal blade, pulse the hazelnuts until roughly chopped. 
2. Add the sugar and espresso and pulse a few more times until the hazelnuts are finely chopped. 
3. Add the chocolate, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt, and pulse a few more times, until the chocolate is finely chopped. 
4. Add 1 C of the flour and the butter and pulse until both ingredients are incorporated. This should only be a few pulses, until you cannot see bits of butter. 
5. Scrape the dough onto a large piece of wax paper and gradually knead in the rest of the flour.
6. Divide the dough in half and roll into two 11 inch logs. Wrap with plastic wrap and refrigerate for two hours. Freeze the dough if you are not planning to use it right away. 
7. When it's time to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. 
8. Line baking sheets with parchment paper (I alternated two baking sheets and reused the parchment paper).
9. Cut the logs into 3/8 inch slices and place them about one and 1/2 inches apart on the baking sheet. 
10. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 9 to 12 minutes. I baked mine for 10 minutes. They will be soft at first, but will firm up as they cool.
11. Cool on the baking sheet for about 3 minutes, and then cool on a wire rack. 

This recipe has been adapted from Nancy Baggett's Simply Sensational Cookies. It's a pretty amazing book.

Cornmeal Sables | Sweet Corn Cookies

Sables are are French shortbread cookie (pronounced "SAB-blay") which are both buttery and crumbly. I'm not sure that cornmeal, farine de mais, is used much in France, but I've read that there are regions, particularly the Basque and other coastal regions, where corn was introduced from the New World.

Regardless, cornmeal and sables were made for each other. The graininess of the cornmeal totally enhances the texture of this cookie.

The flavor of this cookie is reminiscent of a mildly sweet cornbread but with the crunchiness of a butter cookie. I could imagine adding some bits of jalapeno to these cookies and serving them with chili.... hmmm.

For more sables recipes, check out these amazing chocolate sables, or these vanilla bean sables.

Cornmeal Sables Recipe

Adapted from The All-American Cookie Book.

Ingredients

3 large egg yolks

1 1/2 T milk

1 1/2 T vanilla (I used vanilla bean paste)

1/2 C sugar

1/8 tsp salt

1 C cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

9 1/2 ounces unbleached all purpose flour

3/4 C cornmeal

3/4 C powdered sugar

Instructions

1. In a small bowl, whisk the egg yolks, milk, vanilla, sugar, and salt together until full incorporated. 
2. In the bowl of a food processor, pulse the butter, flour, cornmeal, and powdered sugar until crumbly. 
3. In a large shallow bowl, combine the two mixtures and knead until all of the ingredients are combined. 
4. Divide the dough in half and roll each piece between two pieces of wax or parchment paper until 3/8 inch thick. Place each piece of dough, still between two pieces of paper, into the freezer for 30 minutes. 
5. Place a rack in the upper third of the oven and preheat it to 350 degrees F.
6. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. 
7. Remove one of the rolled out pieces of dough and remove one of the layers of paper. Place the paper back onto the dough and flip it over. Remove the (now) top piece of paper and, using a 2 inch round cookie cutter, cut the dough into circles and place them onto the baking sheet. Re-roll the leftover pieces and cut them into cookies.
8. Bake the cookies, one baking sheet at a time, for 12 to 16 minutes, rotating the sheet halfway through. The cookies should be barely browned at the edges. 
9. Continue working with the dough in the freezer as the oven becomes available. 
10. Cool the cookies for 2 minutes on the baking sheet, and then move them to a cooling rack with a thin spatula.
11. Store in an airtight container at room temperature. 

Linked to the Weekend Re-Treat

Vanilla Bean Sable Cookies | Best Vanilla Cookies Ever

See those tiny dots? Vanilla.

Scraped from vanilla beans. Unbelievably good.

This cookie is sort of a cross between a sugar cookie and a butter cookie. I've heard sable means "sandy" in French. Not sure if it's true because I don't know French, but the description fits the texture of these cookies.

This recipe is by Dorie Greenspan and is featured in the April/May 2012 issue of Fine Cooking. I posted a photo of these on Twitter for Dorie and she responded saying that they were lovely and that she liked the twine. Sigh. Love her. Trying not to be seen as a stalker. Sigh.

Here's the recipe:

Chocolate Sables

Chocolate sables are a lovely French shortbread cookie that has a "sandy" crumbly texture. Wonderful, pop-able chocolate cookies with a bit of salt. This is another wonderful recipe from the cookbook Miette featured in this past post.

These cookies are both easy and sophisticated. They rock as gifts.

Chocolate Sables

Adapted with permission from Meg Ray, owner of the bakery Miette, and author of the book with the same name. You can also find the recipe here written by Meg herself.