And now for the best cookies ever! Well, maybe not the best, there is still something missing if you compare them to those perfect little cookies from Nocochi. But these are extremely close. (Please do not judge me on the horror that was yesterday’s events.)
I tried to remember what I loved about the cookies and realized my favourite part is the extremely short dough that they use. It’s so light; it literally melts in your mouth. So I pulled out the big guns, well actually the tiny ones. I found this book by Flo Braker called 'Sweet Miniatures' at Winners for seven bucks (steal!). It seems that she has her finger in every pie because I also noticed that she made a large contribution to the ultimate "Baking with Julia" cookbook.
She says that rice flour is the key to a distinguished shortbread. I had come across this ingredient in many of the Persian cookie recipes and gave it a try with the addition of cardamom and rose water to keep that Persian taste.
They came out so, so, so good. Although cutting out each tiny cookie, cooling the dough, punching a hole in the cookie, cooling them...again, baking them, cooling them...a third time, powdering a million little tops, then finally filling them with cherry jam and squishing them together(pheeeeewwphhh) took four hours.
So I think next time I will just spend the money on the real ones and save the time. I am still going to use this recipe, just not on such a teeny tiny cookie.
Itty Bitty Chocolate Persian Sable's with Cherry Filling
adapted from Flo Braker
1 cups all purpose flour
2/3 cup rice flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/3 cup dark cocoa powder
1 stick plus 6 tbsp. unsalted room temp. butter
1/2 cup of powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 tsp. ground cardamom
1 tbsp. rose water
1 cup cherry jam
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Whisk butter for one minute, and then add sugar and whisk until light coloured and fluffy. Add vanilla, cardamom, and rose water. Mix until blended. Add both flours, cocoa, and salt in three increments, mixing between each addition. When dough is combined, lay out on a plastic sheet and roll until 1/8 inch thick. Cut out tiny shapes with cookie cutter, punching a hole in half of them. Cool the rolled out dough with the cut shapes for 10 minutes so that the pieces lift easily from the plastic sheet. Cover a cookie sheet with parchment paper and place pieces on it. Cool for another 10 minutes. Bake for 9 minutes. In the mean time strain 1 cup of cherry jam into a small pot, boil for 7 minutes. Cool for 10 minutes. When the shapes with the hole are cool dust with powdered sugar. Place 1/8 tsp. of jam on bottom piece of cookies and squish together.
