Chocolate Sea Salt Sables Recipe
This recipe is one of my favorite chocolate cookie recipes ever and as you can see, everybody loves it! It’s both sweet and salty, very buttery and chocolatey, as well as completely addictive. It’s also a great recipe for a day outdoor with kids, as it can be packed easily for a picnic. It comes from the extraordinary Sunday Suppers at Lucques cookbook and I shared a much-loved version of this recipe on A Little Yumminess, but I’ve tweaked it again and will now save this recipe for a long time. Because they’re not overly sweet, people keep coming back to them and I always make two batches because one is not enough.
As far as instructions go, you’ll see that it is quite simple. And for the squirrel, scroll down.
Combine the dry ingredients first.
Add the wet ingredients and the chocolate chips + cocoa nibs.
Mix with a wooden spatula til the dough comes together.
From here on, you can either roll the dough, refrigerate and slice before baking, or roll out, cut shapes and bake. Your choice.
As for this little furry guy (isn’t he the cutest?), you may wonder what he’s doing here.
Well, it was a pure accident. I was out with a friend photographing the baked sables at my local park when we noticed a flurry of activity in the bushes. One peek showed me that two squirrels were jumping from tree to tree to get closer to my cookies. My initial reaction was to pull the cookies but then, I thought better of it. Wouldn’t it look cute if they actually came close? So I waited patiently and as it turned out, the squirrels were chasing each other’s tails to show who the strongest was and took turns approaching the sables very carefully as if they were dynamite. Don’t worry, they didn’t eat any. Looks like they don’t like chocolate. It’s not that I don’t want to share, but chocolate sables with sea salt are probably the nest squirrel diet. So there. And with that, I couldn’t resist using the top picture.
Now without further ado, the recipe.
- ¾ cup all purpose flour
- ¼ cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- ¼ tsp sea salt (fleur de sel if possible for extra crunch)
- 8 tbsps (125g) salted butter, at room temperature
- 6 tablespoons sugar
- 1 extra large egg yolk
- ½ tsp ground cinnamon
- ½ tsp ground cardamom
- 1 cup bittersweet chocolate chips and cocoa nibs
- 1 to 2 tbsp light brown sugar
- In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients: flour, cocoa powder, sugar, spices and sea salt.
- Add the egg yolk and the butter, slightly melted in the microwave or on the stovetop so that it's very soft. Combine with a wooden spoon.
- Add the chocolate chips and chocolate nibs.
- The dough will come together after a few minutes. Keep at it, it really does.
- Roll it into a log on parchment paper.
- Roll the log in the light brown sugar and wrap it tight.
- Refrigerate until very cold and firm
- Preheat oven to 350F/160C
- Slice the dough into ¼ inch/0.5 cm thick rounds and place them ½ inch/1.5 cm apart on a non-stick baking tray.
- Bake 12-15 minutes until set.
- Let cool at room temperature. They will solidify when cold and will be very easy to lift off the tray and pack in an airtight box.
- Enjoy!