It's difficult to focus on just a couple types of cookies in the vast realm of choices, but after frosted cut-outs, one of our favorites is the sablé.  This type of cookie is based on a dough of butter, sugar, flour and salt.  No eggs, no baking powder.  Variations to the basic dough, (2 parts butter, 4 parts flour, 1 part sugar, and a pinch of salt), provide endless melt-in-the-mouth pleasure!  Known in some regions as shortbread, galettes, palets, sand tarts, or butter cookies, in France, the term is sablé - smooth sounding and just as smooth tasting!

Simple - Sablés produce great results with a minimum of ingredients and a minimum of fuss.  Similar to rolled cookies, the butter and sugar are combined thoroughly, but avoiding a light, or fluffy outcome.  Dry ingredients are added all at once and mixed just until incorporated.  Chunky "mix-ins," are folded in by hand.

Switchable - The basic dough is endlessly accommodating of flavorings, (vanilla, almond, or even butter-rum), spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, cardamom), and chunks (chocolate chips, nuts, dried fruits).  Additions shift the character of each recipe while retaining the basic buttery, sweet taste and crunch.  Sandwich two sablé cookies with jam or ganache and double the pleasure.

Shapely - Sablés lend themselves to efficient mass-production techniques.  The dough is rolled into round, square, or even triangular logs.  Some of us like to roll the logs in sanding sugar for a touch of glitter.  A hand-held cookie press can imprint a unique design.

Systematic - After chilling, the logs are cut into slices and readied for baking in a snap.  The defined shapes fit neatly and efficiently in staggered rows on a baking sheet.  It's easy to bake 20 cookies on one sheet.  At 12 minutes per batch, 100 cookies can be baked in an hour!

Storable - Sablés are do-ahead friendly!  The dough can be mixed ahead of time and frozen until needed.  Straight from the freezer the dough may be sliced after just a few minutes of room air.  In fact, very cold dough is easier to slice than warmer dough.  After baking, sablés store and stack well.

Satisfying - When we crave just a little bit of sweet with a cup of coffee, a sablé fills the need completely.  Need we say more?  Sample the sablé recipe below featuring a double chocolate variation.

Dorie Greenspan shares this fantastic recipe in her cookbook, Baking, From My Home to Yours (a great gift for anyone, including you!).  We think Santa will be quite pleased with these cookies!

Ms. Greenspan writes, "These butter-rich, sandy-textured slice-and-bake cookies are members of the sablé family.  But, unlike classic sablés, they are midnight dark - there's cocoa in the dough - and packed with chunks of hand-chopped bittersweet chocolate.  Perhaps most memorably, they're salty.  Not just a little salty, but remarkably and sensationally salty.  It's the salt . . . fleur de sel, a moist, off-white sea salt - that surprises, delights and makes the chocolate flavors in the cookies seem preternaturally profound."

She continues, "When I included these in Paris Sweets, they were called Korova Cookies and they instantly won fans, among them my neighbor Richard Gold, who gave them their new name.  Richard is convinced that a daily dose of Pierre's cookies is all that is needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness."

(Click here for a printable version the recipe in PDF format).

World Peace Cookies

1-1/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 Tablespoons (11 Tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel, or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous 3/4 cup of store-bought mini-chips

Mixing:
(1)  Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together.

(2)  Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy.

(3)  Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

(4)  Turn off the mixer.  Pour in the dry ingredients; drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and your kitchen from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time.  Take a peek - if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more; if not, remove the towel.  Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough - for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don't be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly.

(5)  Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

(6)  Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half.  Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1-1/2 inches in diameter.  Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours.  (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.  If you've frozen the dough, you needn't defrost it before baking - just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer).

Getting Ready to Bake:
(7)  Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

(8)  Using a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick.  (The rounds are likely to crack as you're cutting them - don't be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie).  Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them.

(9)  Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes - they won't look done, nor will they be firm, but that's just the way they should be.  Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.

Serving:
(10)  The cookies can be eaten when they are warm or at room temperature - I prefer them at room temperature when the textural difference between the crumbly cookie and the chocolate bits is greatest - and are best suited to cold milk or hot coffee.

Storing:
(11)  Packed airtight, the cookies will keep at room temperatures for up to 3 days; they can be frozen for up to 2 months.  Makes about 36 cookies.

Recipes from Baking, From my Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan.  Copyright (c) 2006 by Dorie Greenspan.  Used by permission of Houghton Mifflin Company.  All rights reserved.