A couple of weeks ago I made some tasty biscuits for a friend using olive oil, spelt flour and orange juice; spelt flour has a nutty flavour that I thought would go really well with hazelnuts, so I made a mental note to add chopped hazelnuts to the next batch. Then I read Clotilde’s post about Yves Camdeborde’s Sablés…in his recipe, the biscuits dough is shaped into logs, rolled into sugar and then sliced – a simple slice-and-bake technique. The intriguing part comes at the baking stage: the sablés are baked at low temperature (150° C – 300° F) for 30 minutes, so that the biscuits bake gently and evenly, remaining pale in colour, and the sugar coating at the sides becomes slightly caramelised. Sounds interesting, doesn’t it? I made a new batch of biscuits, adding toasted chopped hazelnuts to the original recipe, increasing the amount of orange zest, and using the low-temperature baking method. The result is a moreish, crunchy biscuits with a delicious sweet crust around the edges and a satisfying taste of hazelnuts and orange. Scrumptious!
Instead of round biscuits, I made rectangular, bite-sized ones – just roll the dough into a log first, then flatten by pressing the log sides gently with a chopping board. Repeat until you get a rectangular log.
Stored in a tin box, these cute little biscuits keep well for a week, and will make a lovely present for Christmas, or other festive occasions.
Orange, hazelnut, spelt and olive oil sablés – makes about 40 bite-size biscuits
60 ml freshly squeezed, filtered orange juice (a small orange; 60 ml is equivalent to 4 tablespoons )
60 ml extra-virgin olive oil ( equivalent to 4 tablespoons)
zest of 1 orange
1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt
50 gr vanilla sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
50 gr potato starch
190 gr wholemeal spelt flour
70 gr toasted, finely chopped hazelnuts
2 tablespoon vanilla sugar to coat biscuits
In a bowl, mix orange juice with oil, then add the egg yolk, vanilla extract, orange zest, salt and vanilla sugar.
Spread hazelnuts on a baking tray in a single layer, and toast at 175° C for 10-12 minutes, shaking the tray once or twice to let the nuts toast evenly. Remove hazelnuts from the oven, pour them on a clean towel, then rub them vigorously against each other inside the towel for a while, until most of the skin comes off. Chop hazelnuts finely; if you are using a food processor, add a couple of spoonful of the spelt flour (taken from 190 gr) to the hazelnuts, and pulse quickly several times – this prevents the nuts releasing their oil.
Sieve together flour, potato starch and baking powder, add the chopped hazelnuts and stir well; add the dry mix to the wet mixture, a couple of spoonfuls at a time, using a fork to combine the dough.
Divide the dough in two pieces and roll each piece until you get a log, about 3 cm in diameter; for a rectangular or square section, press the log gently with a small chopping board to flatten the sides, repeating on each side until you get a rectangular/square log. Wrap the dough logs with cling film or parchment paper, then let them rest in the fridge for 60 minutes.
Pre-heat oven to 150° C (300° F). Remove logs from the fridge, then roll them in vanilla sugar until coated evenly. Using a sharp knife, cotton thread or dental floss (clean!), slice the logs into rounds, about 1 cm thick, then place the slices on a baking tray lined with parchment.
Bake for 30 minutes, until the dough is set; the sablés will remain quite light in colour. Let the biscuits rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to cool completely. Stored in a tin box, or an airtight container, they keep for a week.
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