breton cookies

Fill your empty cookie jar with an incredibly crispy, buttery and melt-in-your-mouth French butter biscuits - palet Breton. These are a year-round favorite - a divine sweet treat from Brittany to accompany your afternoon cup of tea or coffee. 

Palet Breton: French Butter Biscuits

+ 2 1/2 teaspoons (90 g) powdered (icing) sugar

4.2 oz (120 g) unsalted butter, softened

+ 4 tablespoons (155 g) all-purpose flour

salt

(5 g) baking powder

Place egg yolks and sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer and whisk them until whitish. Add the softened butter and beat until homogeneous. Using a flour sifter, sift flour, salt, and baking powder, add to the butter mixture, and mix to get the dough (do not overmix!). Wrap the dough in a plastic film and refrigerate for three to four hours.

Preheat oven to 300 F/150 C. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange pastry rings on. Take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out between two sheets of parchment to a thickness of about 2/3 inches/1.5 cm. Using a cookie cutter of about 2 inches/5 cm in diameter, cut the dough into small disks, and place them in the un-buttered pastry rings the cavities of a muffin pan.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes. Remove the biscuits from the oven and let them cool a bit in the rings or the muffin tin. Then carefully remove biscuits from the rings by pushing them from the bottom. In the case of the muffin mold, turn it out and gently remove the biscuits. Use the tip of a knife to facilitate the removal of palets if needed.

These look INCREDIBLE for a recipe with such little ingredients. How perfect for a weekend baking treat! Thanks for sharing :D

I made these for breakfast and they went great with my coffee. I love these! Thanks!

I love that this recipe has very few ingredients and ingredients that you are almost always going to have on hand. It's great for when you are craving a sweet treat. Thanks!

These were delicious! Perfect with morning coffee or an afternoon snack!

These look INCREDIBLE! I've never heard of palet Breton before, but they look delicious and easy to make. Perhaps I will try them with a muffin pan before investing in special rings. Also, I usually don't know what to do with leftover egg yolks other than maybe Hollandaise. This is a fun idea! Thanks :)

These look so light and delicious. I have never heard of these before, but I can't wait to try biscuits.

I tried this recipe, and it was so different from anything we've had before (in the right way, of course!)...we We really liked these biscuits!

We love shortbread, so I just had to make them! The instructions were easy to follow, would make again!

Definitely something I will be making soon - I love the sound of these, and the texture looks incredible! I look forward to filling up my cookie jar with these :)

I am very interested in trying these biscuits. Question: Would Italian 00 Caputo flour - soft wheat flour be okay to use in this recipe? Thank you, Debbie.

European style butter is not about just high butterfat content, but mostly because it is "cultured" butter. This gives the superior flavor to American style, churned butter. (BTW, Kerry Gold is NOT a cultured butter.) I forgot to add baking powder the first time I made these, but they still tasted delicious. I glazed them with egg wash and made a cross pattern with a fork before baking, and they looked pretty. I think 300F is a little too low for these cookies, though.  Thanks for the recipe!

These delicious French Sable Cookies also known as Breton Cookies are a simple buttery crumbly French butter cookie.

French Sable Cookies

butter

sugar

powdered / icing sugar (sifted)

salt (if you use unsalted butter then add ¼ teaspoon of salt)

egg yolks (room temperature)

all purpose flour

vanilla

milk

In the bowl of the mixer cream the butter on medium speed, then add the sugars and salt, beat for one minute.  Reduce the speed to low then add the egg yolks and vanilla beat for one minute. Be sure to scrape the bowl.

Continue on low speed and add the flour in three additions, combining as you add.

Mix the dough just until combined, the dough will be soft. There may be flour remaining at the bottom of the bowl, mix it into the dough with a spatula.

Place the dough on a lightly floured flat surface and knead gently into a ball. Divide the dough into two parts. I formed one into a log about 8-9 inches (20-22 cm) and one into a ball. The log is for slice and bake and the round is for cut out cookies. You can do the same or do one or the other. (If you make of the same type of cookie, be sure to make either two logs or two rounds for easier handling of the dough). Wrap the dough in plastic and chill for at least three hours.

Remove the dough from the fridge. Brush the log with the egg wash (in a small bowl beat together the egg and milk), then sprinkle it with sparkling sugar, cut into 1/3&quot; slices and place on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

To make the cut-out cookies, roll the dough on a lightly floured flat surface and cut out with your favourite cookie cutters. Place the cut outs on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet and sprinkle with sparkling sugar or granulated sugar. No egg wash needed.

Refrigerate the cookies again while the oven is pre-heating at 325F (160C).

Once the oven is ready remove the cookies, one sheet at a time from the fridge and bake 15-17 minutes or until the cookies are light brown on the bottom and lightly golden around the edges but still pale on top.

After 2-3 minutes carefully remove the cookies with a metal spatula from the cookie sheet and carefully place on a wire rack to cool completely. Enjoy!

I wish I had known this before it was too late :(

I constantly find recipes that sound fairly straightforward, follow them exactly, and still fail. This is the first recipe I have ever commented on because it came out perfectly!!

We all loved these! Simple, yet delicious. Can I add orange zest and a couple of tablespoons of orange juice to this recipe without ruining it?

Excellent butter cookies.  Very similar to a shortbread.  They're tender but not fragile and are nice and buttery.  The egg yolks give them a rich yellow colour.  I doubled the vanilla and added a pinch of nutmeg.  The dough handled beautifully and was firm enough to roll smoothly after being chilled for 45 minutes.  The cookies baked up level and smooth and kept their cookie cutter shape.  I followed the metric measures.  I was skeptical about the butter measure since 1 cup of butter is most commonly rated 225 - 227 grams on popular baking sites, but the dough wasn't dry or crumbly with 210 grams of butter.  I rolled the dough to 1/4" thickness, and the cookies baked for 17 minutes.

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