TWD: The World's Ugliest Sables

Okay, that's not the name of this week's Tuesdays with Dorie recipe. It's just plain "Sables". And it's certainly not Dorie Greenspan's fault that they're ugly. It's mine.

See what I mean?

Poor little sable. He's supposed to be all round and crisp and sugar-coated. Instead he just kind of looks ... eh. Sad.

Fortunately for him (or unfortunately, I guess, as long as I'm anthropomorphizing), he was delicious.

Sables, for those who don't know, are a French butter cookie, similar in many ways to shortbread. Except better. The dough is mixed up, rolled into a log and chilled, and then rolled in sugar, sliced and baked. The big issue is that you can't overmix sables if you want to get that sandy texture they're famous for.

And therein lay my downfall.

I was so freaked out about not overmixing that I undermixed. It can happen to the best of us, I guess. I didn't realize how badly I'd undermixed until I spied lumps of flour in the dough as I was rolling it into a log. At that point, it was a little too late, so I soldiered on. Unfortunately, the dough was so crumbly that, even after chilling, it fell apart. There was no hope of coating it in raw sugar, like I'd planned. I managed to get a few nice slices (which baked up looking close to real sables), but the rest...oy. I just smashed them together and hoped for the best.

But boy, were they tasty. And their texture was perfect. So, I'm pretty sure if I didn't do the freak-out undermixing thing, they would be great.

I just didn't get to test that theory before it was time to post for TWD. So, you get ugly sables. Sorry.

If you want to see what real sables look like (and get the recipe), head to Bungalow Barbara's blog.