Olive Sables for #cookieofthemonth

It’s the first Monday of the month so it is Cookie of the Month time, hosted by Jen at Jen’s Favorite Cookies!  This month’s theme was berries.  At the bottom, you will find all those participating in this month’s Cookie Challenge and their contributions.  This month I wanted to be different – to challenge myself and boy did I ever do that!  I looked up all things classified “berry” and found the usual suspects of strawberries, blueberries, blackberries etc….  but then my eyes fell upon olives.  Olives are berries?  I didn’t know that.  Hold on a minute here – didn’t I see something called “Olive Sables” in last month’s Blogger CLUE post?  Yep, I did!  And then my friend Lillian from Lillian’s Cupboard blog said she was going to try them herself.  I asked her to check back with me after she made them.

She emailed and said she had done a bit of research finding out these were created by a young French chef (named Pierre Hermes’) who was renowned to putting odd things into his sweets and famous for all his macaroon combinations.  She also told me that the way to pronounce the name of the cookies is Olive Sa-blay.  She seemed to like them pretty well so I forged on gathering up the needed ingredients.  I will make two admissions here:  I only wanted to make half of the full recipe because there was no way I thought I could convince everyone to eat 60 of these things and I wasn’t going to spend big money on olives just to find out I hated them so I bought a 2.25 oz can of sliced black olives because we would eat those anyway.  The recipe is from the Jewish Woman’s Magazine (online) via That Skinny Chick Can Bake.

Olive Sables

Ingredients:

1 hardboiled egg yolk

1 1/8 Cups of Flour

3 Tablespoons Potato Starch (I highly recommend you go ahead and get this)

1 Stick good quality butter, unsalted and at room temperature

2 Tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons of Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Lillian said she used regular and it was fine)

½ Cup Powdered Sugar, sifted

1 ¼ oz. of chopped olives (that’s ½ of the 2.25 oz. can of sliced black olives I had), drained

 

Directions:

Grate the hardboiled egg yolk onto a plate or piece of wax paper and then mix it in with the potato starch.

In a medium bowl, mix the butter until creamy.

Add in the olive oil and mix well followed by the yolk and potato starch .

Add the powdered Sugar mixing well.

Set the mixer to low speed and add the flour – mix it only until it comes together and no more.

Put the olives in and fold them into the dough with a spatula.

Set the dough out onto a clean counter and roll into a round shape then wrap in plastic wrap.

Set in the fridge for several hours or like I did, overnight.

Then, when you are ready to make the cookies:

Preheat the oven to 325F.

Unwrap the cookies and slice them ¼ inch thick then lay them on a parchment paper lined baking sheet

Bake for 15-18 minutes turning the baking sheet around half way through taking out before they turn brown.  Makes about 30 cookies.

Let them cool and give ‘em a try!

Here’s our verdict – we liked them!  Rocket loved them and ended up eating two a day for nearly a week.  I thought the bite of the black olive gave it a good zing every once in a while and otherwise, I am going to use the recipe as the best and easiest shortbread cookie recipe I have ever made.  I just won’t put in the olives or the egg yolk.  They were tender and crisp yet moist – all in all, a winner in our book, minus Mr. Picky Eater.  You should have seen his face when I told him what was in them.  Ha!

Now, please check out the other cookie recipes made with the berry theme below!

Bake or Break – Blueberry Lemon Cookies

Taste of Lizzy T – Raspberry Tarts with Mascarpone Cream

Posed Perfection:  Chocolate Raspberry Oatmeal Cookies

Jen’s Favorite Cookies:  Chocolate Blackberry Cream Cookies