I take inspiration where I can get it.
This recipe, for example, was inspired by the Salt & Pepper chocolate bar, one of my favorite flavors from Nashville’s own bean-to-bar chocolate company, Olive & Sinclair. The bar features 67% dark chocolate sprinkled with flake sea salt and black pepper. I’ve been wanting to turn that bar into a chocolate sable cookie for some time now (why sables? Because “salt & pepper sable cookie” just sounds cool, I guess?) and finally got my scattered thoughts together to actually make it a reality.
Now, I know the idea of black pepper with chocolate might sound strange to you, but trust me, it’s really something unique and rather delicious. Especially with the sea salt, it’s like a megaphone for flavor.
The cookies, rather than being sprinkled with S&P (because that would be boring and expected), are dipped in dark chocolate and then set on a cookie sheet that’s been sprinkled with flake sea salt and coarsely ground black pepper. The chocolate settles into the spices as it hardens, giving the cookies a hidden punch of flavor in each and every bite.
They’re not topped. They’re bottomed.
You could also dip one side of the cookie in chocolate instead of the bottom, and sprinkle that with salt and pepper, but you’d end up with a salty peppery side and a plain side. You could also sprinkle the unbaked cookies with a bit of sea salt and pepper and skip the dipping altogether, but where’s the fun in that?
The secret to super rich, ultra-chocolaty, and delightfully sandy sable cookies? Three kinds of chocolate for one thing, including dutch-process cocoa powder and grated chocolate in the dough, and a dip in dark chocolate after baking.
The other secret? European butter. The high fat/low water content in the butter keeps the cookies tender and not tough, and the dough workable and not crumbly. Trust me on this one. I personally used salted Kerrygold Irish butter, but any other European or French-style butter would work well too.
Dipping strategy is everything.
For these cookies I lined a baking sheet with parchment, and sprinkled 24 roundish areas of salt and pepper onto the parchment.
Then I dipped my cookies (btw this little chocolate melting pot is my favorite tool, I’ve never burnt a batch of chocolate since I’ve had this thing). Yes, your fingertips will get dipped too, but that’s ok (we’re not scared of a little mess, are we now?)
Place the just-dipped chocolate-bottomed cookies onto the S&P sprinkled baking sheet. The melted chocolate will settle and set with the seasoning firmly embedded (unlike if you sprinkled it on top, the salt might flake off if the cookies get jostled together).
If you have any leftover chocolate (you should), transfer it to a plastic squeeze bottle and drizzle it over the top of your cookies.
Now, if you know how to temper chocolate, good on you (teach me your ways). Your dipped-in-tempered-chocolate cookies will be stable at room temperature (just call them stable sables).
But if, like me, you tend to lose your temper (in more ways than one), don’t despair: just keep your cookies refrigerated so the chocolate stays solid (and again, some might melt onto your fingers as you eat it but I think we’ve determined that’s not an issue here).
Chocolate sable cookies dipped in dark chocolate and sprinkled with salt and black pepper for an intensely flavorful, deeply chocolate cookie with a unique twist.
*This recipe uses European style butter, which has a higher fat content than American-style butter. The high fat/low water content makes the dough less crumbly and gives these cookies their distinctive texture. This is a splurge recipe, so go for the good butter and the good chocolate!
Let us know what you think!
Leave a Comment below or share a photo and tag me on Instagram with the hashtag #loveandoliveoil.