Painting with egg yolk

painting a log of cookie dough with egg yolk

Good evening, everyone.  Well, it's evening now, but it might not be by the time you are reading this. Still ... good evening, everyone.

I posted a photo on Instagram a couple days ago, the photo shown above, painting cookie dough with egg yolk.  In conversations with a couple different people since then, I have been asked why in the world would anyone do that?  Well, here's the answer.

When I make my lemon sablés, I form the dough into a firmly packed log and chill it for quite a while.  When it's finally ready to be used, I whisk an egg yolk until it is smooth and liquidy.  (I know, I know, most people will say that liquidy is not a real word, but it is.  Honest!)  Then I take a pastry brush and paint the log of cookie dough until it has a thin layer of yolk all around.  At that point the cookie dough log goes to another tray where I have spread some plain old sugar, and I roll the dough over the sugar.  Without the yolk brushed on, very little of the sugar would stick to the chilled dough.  But the presence of the yolk changes that, allowing for plenty of sugar to coat the log.  Then I slice the dough into even rounds.

When they bake, the yolk and sugar create a thin crust around the edge of each round, sort of like a thin layer of bark on a round of wood cut from a felled tree.

fresh from the oven

And here you see a whole tray.  If you look closely, you can see the sugary ring around each cookie.

light lemon sablés

And here's the photo of these cookies from the menu on the main website.  It's very easy to see the "bark" on each of these cookies.  

I always enjoy eating these.  The slightly crackly edge contrasts nicely with the rich buttery sandy interior that falls apart in the mouth.  But just as nice is the process of making them.  Painting and rolling them in sugar is actually quite fun, and young kids and big kids and adults all seem to enjoy watching and then want to do it themselves.

Give it a try sometime with any cookie dough that you chill in log form.  Maybe you'll find it to be as much fun as it is for me.