I love butter. When I was a kid, I used to spread a big chunk of butter on my white bread and savour every bite of it. The best spread is white bread with a thick coat of butter and sugar. Heck, I was even guilty of just eating a plain square of butter on it’s own. Yummy… hahaha… well that was back then… now when I see a kid doing the same as I did back then, I cringe in horror – images of choked artery come to mind. Could it be that I have been over-exposed to health commercials aired on TV? 😛
Anyway it still doesn’t stop me from indulging myself once in a while – old habits die hard. Sometimes I would sneak a big slap of butter on my bread with a little jam during breakfast – whenever Pierre isn’t watching or else he would give me a long lecture on cholesterol and all. 😛 I remember once he caught me eating a slice of bread with butter coated with peanut butter on top with a horrified look on his face that goes ‘Are you really going to finish that!’ 😁
And of course without a doubt, my all time favourite cookies are butter cookies. My first taste of butter cookies were those Danish Butter Cookies (those famous blue round tin). It was a great treat when I was little as these cookies were imported and very expensive back then. It’s funny how a great luxury back then has become a common treat today.
I have made these almond butter-cookies about a month ago after seeing a beautiful photo of it in a local monthly magazine but never got around to write about it.
Petits Sablés aux Amandes
Preparation: 20 minutes
Baking: 30 mins + 1 hour (refrigerator)
Makes: 30 (approximately)
Ingredients
- 250 g flour
- 2 eggs
- 50 ml liquid cream
- 120 g salted butter (soften)
- 120 g sugar
- 30 almonds
- 11 g baking powder
Directions
- Mix flour and baking powder in a bowl.
- Whisk eggs and sugar in a big bowl, add in the butter while whisking non-stop until it is creamy.
- Add in the flour mixture and knead it with your fingers.
- Form the dough into a ball and place it in a cool place for 2 hours or refrigerate it for 1 hour.
- Preheat oven at 180°C (350°F- gas mark 4)
- Flour your work table and roll out the dough to 1 cm thickness.
- Cut them out into about 30 rectangles
- Place half of the quantity onto the baking tray lined with baking paper.
- Place an almond on top of each rectangles and brush the surface with liquid cream.
- Bake them for 15 minutes.
- Let the biscuits cool on the wire rack.
- Cool off the baking tray under running water and then put the rest of the batch of rectangles in the oven.
- These shortbread can be kept for 5 or 6 days in an airtight container.
The Verdict
Not as buttery as I was hoping, maybe because I was a bit too generous with the flour. Pierre thinks they are just nice, but would go for just an half-almond on top as a whole one for every cookie is a bit too much. Otherwise it goes nicely with our 5 o’clock cup of tea and stays fresh in a sealed container.
Notes
I must have over-whipped the egg and sugar (it was fluffy and creamy) before adding the butter because with the said amount of flour, I couldn’t get it to form a dough. It was a sticky mess so I had to add more flour to get it to form a dough.
