Chocolate Sables (French Butter Cookies)

Settling into a full-time job and life in a new part of the city has been an intense process over the past four months, but thankfully all the late-night baking has been keeping me grounded…perhaps more than I care to admit! I’m still working my way slowly but steadily through the long list of travel-inspired recipes from last summer’s trip to ten European countries, but of all the recipes that I’ve tried so far, these Chocolate Sablés (or Chocolate French Butter Cookiesé) are certainly a French-inspired favorite.

Classic sablés consist of a few top-quality ingredients: Butter, flour, and powdered sugar. The word “sablé” means “sand” in French, which is fitting for these perfectly crumbly shortbread biscuits. Last year I shared a recipe for Classic Scottish Shortbread after visiting Edinburgh (Spoiler Alert: We visited again this year!), so I decided to shake things up by throwing a bit of smoky chocolate and cookies ‘n’ cream white chocolate into the mix. Because who doesn’t love a chocolatey twist, right?

The reason why so many Paris locals were subjected to my horrific American-French accent that day, by the way, was actually not my fault: There was a massive train closure that affected all lines leaving from Montparnasse Station, as I learned while I watched the French news over a breakfast of croissant and jam crepes at my boutique hotel along Rue Saint-Dominique in the seventh arrondissement. After asking the (highly unhelpful) front desk assistant about how this would my travel that night to the south of France, where my Spanish friend would be picking me up, I decided to brave the streets of Paris and spend my last day scouting info from some of the locals.

As it turns out, everyone I approached got over the shock of my atrocious French quickly enough to help me figure out where I should go, how to inquire for additional info, and so forth. Highlights include the two armed guards that I stopped outside the Louvre (they didn’t speak a lick of English but were the sweetest pair!), the security guard at Montparnasse who actually tracked me down in the overcrowded station because he knew that I didn’t understand the French announcements over the speaker and said that I had to catch an emergency shuttle to a second station, the Parisienne who sat with me for two hours at the train station discussing the political/cultural climate in France, and the extremely nice man on the train with whom I spent five hours practicing French!

On that note, these crumbly chocolate sables are a twist on the classic French butter cookie and every bit as good as the original. Stuff with dark chocolate chips and white chocolate bits for an even more dynamic taste. Recipe slightly adapted from ]Southern Living.