Chef's Checkerboards
After 2 arduous days spent preparing our Sable Hollander (or Checkerboard cookie) dough, mixing and kneading, precise layering and slicing, they were finally ready for the oven!
Great Florentines Come In All Shape & Sizes
Pretty as Hollanders may be, the Florentines are by far my favourite cookies to snack on: thick slabs of sweet, crunchy almond slices topped with an equally thick coating of dark coverture chocolate, the Florentines were not only easy make but more so a breeze to devour straight after!
But wait! There's more! Notice how smooth and shiny the chocolate disks are? That, my friends, is what you get from tempering the chocolate, something else we tried our hands at doing today. How wicked is that!?!
A Little Treat
One of Chef's little helpers brought along the Concord she made in Intermediate Patisserie for us, how lucky are we? I gave it a miss, though, thoroughly content with the Florentines I still had in my mouth. I remember Concord being a decadent chocolate mousse and meringue cake, having my first taste of it from Sweet Secrets when I was just a wee little girl...ah sweet memories...
My Cookie Tray
I managed to get most parts right today, Hollanders looking pretty good, Florentines tasting even better. Tempering chocolate I'll have to try again, seeing how I wasn't able to hit the exact temperatures. You may also notice the sky scraper of a chocolate disk each almonds base was struggling to support. That, my friends, is the result of unbashful, undeniable greed. Not that there's ever anything wrong with that. ;)
U know, the checkerboards are so Malay-in some sense. Since, its a staple every year for Hari Raya in Malaysia. not having it here, is insanely hard to swallow. BTW, are u guys making mooncakes anytime soon? =p
ReplyDeleteHi, very interesting post, greetings from Greece!
ReplyDeleteThank you, my first Greek friend! Do you have similar cookies in Greece? I saw an episode of Anthony Bourdain in Greece and he had the most amazing nougat there, so Greece is definitely on my list of places to eat my way through!
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