During the lock down I did nothing but surf the web and social media to discover new cooking recipes. I ranged from short-crust pastry to leavened products, from sweet to savory.
I fell in love with this recipe that a well-known American pastry chef, Antonio Bachour, posted on Facebook.
I adapted it a bit to make it feasible with ingredients found in all the pantries.
They are delicious cookies.

Cocoa sable with caramel ganache

  • Preparation time: 160 minutes
  • Ingredients for about 40 double cookies
  • Difficulty: Average difficult recipe

  • Ingredients
  • For the sable dough:
  • 1 cup (240 grams) of butter
  • 4 cups (450 grams) of all-purpose flour
  • 2 tablespoons (30 grams) of bitter cocoa
  • 1 cup 3 tbs (180 grams) of icing sugar
  • 3 oz (70 grams) of almond flour
  • 2 large eggs
  • For the caramel ganache:
  • ½ cup (110 ml) of heavy cream
  • 2 oz (60 grams) of glucose syrup
  • 1 oz (30 grams) of honey
  • 4 oz (110 grams) of sugar
  • 4 oz (110 grams) of milk chocolate
  • 1 tbs (15 grams) of cocoa butter (I omitted it)
  • 2 oz (60 grams) of salted butter
  • Fleur de sel to taste (optional)
  1. Instructions
  2. To a bowl, add the flour, the almond flour, the icing sugar, and the cocoa. Mix briefly. Add the butter cut in pieces and beat until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs. When the mixture is homogeneous, add the eggs and bring the mixture together until it forms a ball. Roll dough to 2mm thickness between two pieces parchment paper, cover in plastic wrap, and refrigerate until ready to use.
  3. Preheat the oven to 325°F.
  4. Roll the dough to 2mm thickness between two pieces of parchment paper, cover in plastic wrap, and keep in the freezer for one hour.
  5. Using a 6cm round cutter, cut rounds of dough and place on a perforated baking sheet or baking tray lined with a non- stick silicone mat. Cover the sable rounds with another silicone mat. Bake sables until fully baked through, 15-20 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
  6. Meanwhile, prepare the ganache.
  7. In a medium pot, bring heavy cream to a boil with glucose and honey.
  8. In a saucepan, heat granulated sugar slowly to reach a golden amber color. Add the cream mixture slowly to deglaze, then pour hot liquid over the chocolate. Whisk until smooth. Cool to 35°C/95°F before adding butter and processing with a hand blender until smooth. Let the ganache set to 23°C/73°F and transfer to a pastry bag.
  9. Pipe salted caramel ganache over half of the sable and a flake of fleur de sel in the center. Cover with a second sable.
  10. Store in a tin box.

Tips to ensure the success of the dish:

  •  Invert sugar is one of the ingredients of the original caramel recipe. I replaced it with honey.
  • There is also cocoa butter in the recipe, which I eliminated.
  • The timing of cooking in the oven is indicative because each oven cooks differently. The pastry shouldn’t get too dark.
  • The fleur de sel is a raw salt produced in the south of France in crystals. It’s low in sodium and unrefined. It is a rare and precious salt that makes shortbread and sables very tasty because it creates an interesting contrast between sweet and savory.