Comments on: Wrap hazelnut shortbread around a whole hazelnut. Swoon.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 03:52:15 +0000

Welcome Hilde! Your feedback is valuable, thanks. I probably process the butter further, but otherwise our approach has been similar regarding chilling etc. It's true that they don't stay perfectly round. I don't think there's any way they can (and the coarser the butter, the more likelihood of deforming, I guess). I've tried reducing sugar, but I must say that I found the sweet-salt contrast quite lovely in the original recipe. And finally, I think keeping some skins is good for the flavour.

By: Hilde

Hilde — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 20:41:48 +0000

I just had to try these. I had a go this afternoon and I must say, they are indeed divine, but what's more I had no problem at all "assembling" them !
What I did differently, I ground the nuts (A) together with about half the flour (I used french all purpose flour ; what is best for sablés ?), I stirred in the rest of the flour and the sugar with a spoon, then I added the butter, roughly cut up and ICECOLD, and pulsed (literally) no more than a few times – to obtain very very rough crumbs. I first mixed the salt with the chopped nuts (B) and then added this to the dough with a last pulse (to reduce manipulation of the dough to an absolute minimum).
I put the (very rough) crumbs in the fridge for an hour or so.
I put a little (cold) mixture in my handpalm, patting it a bit with my finger to bring the crumbs together and form sort of a circle, I put a nut in the middle, covered it with the circle of dough and that was number one – ready in a matter of seconds.
I repeated this procedure about fifty times and had batch one ready in under fifteen minutes !
(I have mixture left in the fridge for another twenty balls or so).
I'm really not that handy and certainly not very quick, I think the key is in minimal manipulation of the dough and keeping the temperature low.
I baked the balls for 15 minutes at 160 °C (conventional electrical oven) and they were perfect – except for the shape that is ; they did not stay completely round. Oven too cold ? Too hot ? I think my layer of dough around the nuts may have been a bit thicker than Duncan's cause I certainly could not make 90 balls, I think no more than 70.
Next time I want to try and grind the nuts with the sugar instead of the flour – the more logical thing to do, but that would be the same as using icing sugar and I didn't want to tamper with the recipe first time.
Also I want to try and reduce the amount of sugar, I find them very sweet and think they could be even nicer, tasting more of nuts, with less sugar.
One more thing : after roasting the nuts for 20 mins at 150 °C the skins simple fell off, it was impossible to keep enough with skins on, but skin on or off didn't make a difference in the assembly.

By: Julia @ Mélanger

Julia @ Mélanger — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 21:10:11 +0000

These sound delicious – especially with fleur de sel. I'm addicted to using it this month. What a shame that delightful patisserie closed. But in Paris, there are so many fabulous places.

By: Duncan

Duncan — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:40:55 +0000

@Manggy: I sort of rejected the idea of making the surface of the nuts a bit rough, basically for aesthetic reasons.

The egg white idea might be viable, thanks! But much less than one egg white to start with — I'm concerned about the sugar in the pastry starting to dissolve.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 09:26:37 +0000

Oh yum! I loved those!!!

xox Sarah

By: Manggy

Manggy — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:17:18 +0000

Shame about the patisserie! Hopefully it resurfaces someday (perhaps with a more manageable size?).

I'm not sure this would help, but perhaps rolling the whole hazelnuts gently on the surface of a rasp will create enough traction for the mixture to stick. Probably the mixture's refusal to cohere is the bigger problem. Maybe a touch more butter wouldn't hurt the texture. A single egg white is a little riskier but it could pay off!