Triple chocolate sablés

Today I am making triple chocolate sablés.  These don't require many ingredients and they aren't very complicated.  They also don't require much time.  And they taste amazing!

First we need flour with a small quantity of very high quality cocoa powder mixed in and a small amount of baking soda.  Then we will measure out both white sugar and light brown sugar, a little fleur de sel, and a teaspoon of vanilla.  Butter should be measured out but kept chilled in the fridge.  We will not soften the butter before creating our dough.  The final ingredient to prepare is the chocolate.  For this recipe I use 5 ounces of chocolate:  2 ounces bittersweet with 60% - 66 % cacao, and 3 ounces semisweet with 52% - 55% cacao.  The cacao percentages can be modified, but these are the percentages I prefer for this cookie.  All 5 ounces are chopped -- some pieces will be tiny, some just very small, and there will be a fair amount of almost powdered chocolate when finished.  The non-uniformity of the chopped chocolate is one of the good things about this cookie.

The cold butter is creamed in the mixer.  Then the sugars, fleur de sel and vanilla are added and mixed in thoroughly.  Now the flour mixture is poured into the mixing bowl but mixed only until incorporated.  We don't want to overmix this.  Finally the chopped chocolate is added.  The chocolate pieces will help any butter mixture that remains stuck on the sides mix in as it swirls in the bowl.

Now the entire mixture is poured out onto a tray.  It is quite crumbly, but this is OK.  We want it that way.  At this point, I will use my hands to start forming it into a log.  As the log takes shape, I start flattening the sides so that in the end it is a four side square log about 9 inches long.  I will manipulate it both by hand pressure and by percussive force on the tray (tamping it down on the tray) until I have a basically even shape from end to end.  Then I will turn the square log on it's end and tamp it down just a bit to flatten it, and then repeat with the other end.

Now this has to go into the fridge for at last a few hours.  It should be cold and very firm.  Once chilled, slice off 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick slices and pop them into a 325 F oven for 11 1/2 minutes, 12 at most.  One of the nice things about this dough is that is can be taken straight from the freezer (where it can be stored for a month or so), cut and baked right away without the need to warm up.  Simply bake the cookies an extra minute or so.

When they come out of the oven, let them sit on the pan for a few minutes.  They need to firm up a bit before removal to a cooling rack.

These are an amazing cookie.  The first batch will be out of the oven soon.  I can hardly wait.

Enjoy the mild weather today.  Soon we will see bitterly cold temperatures if the weather forecasts are correct.  I will keep some of this dough in the freezer for those cold days coming up.