Brown Butter & Sage Sablés

I have a confession to make: this was my second attempt at making these cookies. The first time, about a week ago, the dough simply crumbled all over the place as I tried to roll and shape it, even after chilling, so I just gave up. I don't like to admit when I fuck up, but I also want to be as honest as possible. It's always frustrating when a recipe doesn't turn out the way I hope it would, especially since I consider myself to be very responsible with my money and hate seeing things go to waste. However, I recognize that as part of this project, in which I am making 185 different recipes of varying levels, mostly for the first time, I will inevitably experience my fair share of fuck-ups, and that shouldn't discourage me. Because I want to be able to review the best version of a recipe I can make in order to be fair to Claire, I decided to shelve these cookies and come back to them later. That being said, this could also be a testament to the nature of a recipe - ideally, it should turn out well on the first try.

A sablé is essentially a French shortbread, made with a mixture of flour, butter, and sugar with little to no liquid added, which inhibits gluten development and results in a very crumbly, tender cookie (hence the name sablé, or "sandy"). Claire's version from Dessert Person gives this classic cookie a slight twist by using browned butter infused with sage. To be honest, this recipe seemed a bit basic and didn't really stand out to me when I was first browsing through the book, but I was definitely intrigued by the incorporation of sage, an herb usually used in savory dishes, so I was excited to give it a try.

The recipe starts out as many good recipes do - by browning butter. I have learned by now from making several Claire Saffitz recipes that the method she generally gives for browning butter, especially in Dessert Person, takes a lot longer than it says in the book, at least on my stovetop. She instructs you to melt the butter on medium-low heat, which helps it brown more evenly and reduces the chance of it burning but can also take upwards of 30 minutes if your saucepan is not preheated. I highly advise to just put the pan on the heat before even getting out any of the other ingredients - it'll save you a ton of time. This is a special brown butter because it's infused with a few sage sprigs, which impart a really unique piney aroma as the butter browns and give it a color that reminded me of, well, another "herb" sometimes used in baking (if you know what I mean).

Claire instructs you to let the browned butter cool as it solidifies. You will be tempted to rush this step, because there really isn't anything else to do while that's happening, but I highly advise against that. The first time I made this recipe, I chilled the butter in the refrigerator thinking that would do the trick, but I found that it solidified unevenly and might have been one of the reasons my first attempt failed (I also like to think it was karma for me not reading the recipe the whole way through beforehand). The second time I just left it on the counter, and when I noticed it wasn't really doing much, I moved it in front of my fan (yes, I know it's a very tacky move, don't judge) and that really helped. The butter won't be totally as solid as a stick from the fridge, but it should have the consistency of spreadable, softened butter and should not at all be liquid. 

From there, the dough gets made with a stand or hand mixer (though it also seems entirely doable by hand) by incorporating flour, sugar, and a little bit of egg to the butter mixture. The dough is then formed into logs and chilled in the fridge for at least two hours. This was where I went wrong the first time - the dough was extremely sandy and wouldn't really come together into a smooth mixture. I tried forming it into a log the best that I could, but after chilling it still wasn't at the texture where it could be cut into neat slices. The second time around was much better, but there were still a few cracks in the dough that were difficult to patch together. That being said, I found the dough (at least the second time around) to be very forgiving, so you can literally smoosh the broken bits together and it'll be fine, it just might not look perfect like the picture. The logs of dough also get rolled in some Demerara sugar that gets mixed with the leftover finely crumbled sage leaves from making the butter. I found it interesting that Claire didn't call for an egg wash in this recipe to help the sugar adhere better - it was a little difficult to get the sugar to stick on fully.

These cookies are definitely much better texturally at room temperature, so I wouldn't serve them straight out of the oven. A lot of parts of this recipe remind me of Alison Roman's Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbreads, a cookie that is very near and dear to my heart. However, I think Alison's recipe is a little more foolproof than Claire's - the dough always seems to come together a little more easily, despite there being no egg in it. I definitely think this is due to the extra step of browning and cooling the butter in this recipe - although it adds another dimension of flavor, it can be a little finicky to get totally right. For me, this is an example of a recipe that's quite simple and doesn't take a whole lot of time, but has that one seemingly-not-difficult element to it that can totally trip you up if you don't take your time with it.

Overall, these are nice tiny little cookies that are lovely when you don't have room for a bigger dessert, or when you simply need a pick-me-up. They have a really wonderfully dense, buttery, shortbready texture that melts in your mouth but still has a good amount of body and structure to it. It's not too sweet, and the sage adds a really interesting and unusual herbal, woodsy flavor to the cookie but definitely isn't overpowering. I thought it was a really nice addition and was just enough to make the cookie feel more special than your typical shortbread. I am now firmly of the opinion that we need more sage (and herbs in general) in dessert! That being said, I still feel like this cookie was a little on the plain side for my taste. It'll definitely appeal to people who like simpler sweet things, but I prefer desserts that have a little bit more going on. I don't know; if these were on a dessert spread with a bunch of other really lovely things, they probably wouldn't be what I would go for first. But that's just me.

I really debated whether I'd give this cookie a 7 or 8. I really liked them, and there wasn't really anything wrong with them per se, but they also didn't blow me away. I decided to be more conservative with my rating, for the reason that the dough felt a little bit too tricky to work with considering it's a relatively basic, simple recipe that an inexperienced baker should, in theory, be able to produce successfully. I also just feel like I'm being a bit too generous with my ratings overall. If I could give them a 7.5 I would, but I've decided against using non-whole-number ratings.

verdict: 7/10

would I make again: it's a maybe