French Food Friday - PIerre Herme's Chocolate Shortbread

 

Yesterday I was in the mood to bake but I was not sure what I wanted to make. 

I wanted to make some friands but I had no ground almonds  as these were used to make a flourless chocolate cake and I forgot to buy some more.

After some deliberation, I decided to make one of our favourite recipes; Pierre Herme's Chocolat sables as I had all the ingredients to hand.

The best part about this recipe is chopping about lots of lovely, yummy dark chocolate and the worst part is reading the part of the recipe that says leave the mixture in the fridge for an hour when you do not have an hour. 

10 minutes in the freezer did the trick and this time I decided  not to make a log shape,  instead I made a  flat round shape which I then used as a base to cut out heart shape biscuits.



SABLÉS CHOCOLAT À LA FLEUR DE SEL

3 g fleur de sel

150 g butter 

120 g brown sugar or coconut sugar

50 g caster sugar 

150 g 70% cocoa chocolate

175 g flour

5 g natural liquid vanilla extract 

30 g cocoa powder

5 g baking soda

METHOD

1. Cut the chocolate into small pieces. Mix and sift the flour, cocoa powder and baking soda. Soften the butter and incorporate both sugars (brown and caster), the salt and liquid vanilla, then add the flour/cocoa/baking soda and roughly chopped chocolate. Mix as little as possible, as with a shortcrust pastry. Shape into rolls of about 4 cm diameter. Put in the refrigerator for at least an hour. Cut into slices of a good centimeter large. Put on an oven rack covered with silicone paper.

2. Bake for 11/12 minutes  at 170°C in a preheated oven.

TIPS

The baking time is highly important, in order to be good, the shortbread must be underdone.

The use of fleur de sel allows to tone down the effect of saltiness, if you choose to replace it with table salt, you have to reduce the weight to 2 g.

You can make the dough a couple days ahead, store it in the fridge or freezer and cook it as you need it. A few days in a sealed container, shielded from the humidity.


Bon vendredi à tous ♥♥ Leeann x 

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