Les Petits Chefs baking club is back for the term! We had a “trial run” session last week where we made a simple but delicious cookie – Sablés Bretons.
Because I didn’t know how many kids to expect in the trial week, I stuck to a recipe that doesn’t use many ingredients and ones that I have on hand – so this one was perfect. Butter, sugar, flour, egg and vanilla plus a touch of salt (we omitted as I realised that I didn’t have my sea salt at school but you should use it!).
It IS a recipe that requires hand mixers so I had to lug both mine into school as we don’t have any in our equipment anymore. It’s honestly the highlight for the kids, using the mixers, and so we all take turns and use them for a certain amount of “counts” so everyone gets a fair go!
We started by measuring sugar and butter then creaming them together…
Next we separated eggs and then added them to the mix…
After that, we added some vanilla (I’m teaching them to eyeball small quantities!)
And once the wet ingredients were combined, we carefully added flour to the mix…
No pics of the next stage because I had to troubleshoot the mixture which just wasn’t coming together super well – it might have been dry weather conditions (it was warm that day) but the mix needed a little drizzle of cold water to bring it together better. There’s no hard and fast rule about this but once you’ve baked these cookies a couple of times, you’ll start to understand
Then we got to rolling and cutting our cookies:
The beauty of these cookies is that they do not require a rest in the fridge (although if you are working in a warmer climate or a warm kitchen, you can obviously put the dough into the fridge if it’s getting too warm. But it’s a perfect recipe for a short session!
The cookies get scored on top with a fork and then eggwashed. Ours were a wee bit rustic (and our dough was warm after all those little hands had rolled and cut and re-rolled!) but they worked out!
It was a regular cookie factory!
You can see the finished cookies at the top of the post – below are some for reference made by me!
This was a successful intro session – so successful that one of my little bakers has already made another batch by himself this weekend! #winning
Get the recipe
Get the recipe for Sablés Bretons here OR in French Food for Everyone: le goûter (after-school snacks)
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