Sweet & Savory

Sablés Florentins

While in New York City for J's and my anniversary trip, I picked up a copy of one of Pierre Hermé's early (read: pre- Dorie Greenspan) works, Secrets Gourmands. During the two hours that we spent inside Kitchen Arts & Letters, I used my fading knowledge of the French language, unused since my high school foreign language classes, to browse this fully-French cookbook, from cover to cover. What snippets I could translate greatly inspired me. I bought the cookbook and resolved to start learning French again.

Since that trip, I have bought a decent French-English dictionary and set to translating which ever recipe interested me at bedtime (yes, at bedtime, I read nearly exclusively cookbooks). It was a slow process for a month or two, but I think I've finally built up an adequate French vocabulary as applied to baking.

One night last week, I sat in bed and admired the Sablés Florentins pictured on page 175. In one session, I translated the whole recipe.

I made the pâte sucrée the same night J and I made our tart for SHF 9. The next day, I rolled and baked the pâte and covered it with a layer of almond brittle, which was actually more like taffy than brittle. After the whole sheet cooled, I cut it up into 90 squares of about 2.5 to 3 cm on each side, and then dipped each of them in tempered dark chocolate.

It was all I could do to allow them to cool, before eating the finished sablés. They were absolutely divine! The crust was crumbly, a perfect companion to the chewy almond and caramel. The slightly bitter dark chocolate helped to cut the sweetness of the caramel.

I think J and I ate about 30 pieces in the end, before deciding to share with our friends and family. My coworkers got to share 20 pieces, and J's coworkers got the same. My parents got about 10. And the remaining 10 pieces, I'll chalk up to "quality assurance". *wink*