Chocolate Diamond Cookies, Aurélie’s Treasure

Lately we visited the amazing boulangerie of Roland Feuillas, located in a beautiful village in southern France, named Cucugnan. Roland uses a wood-fired oven in which breads, pastries and even wonderful butter cookies are baked.

The cookies are baked in the wood oven after baking the breads, with its temperature dropping naturally to 160-180 degrees. There is an exact time when they are baked, before the oven cools down too much. Aurélie, Rolands’s daughter, is the queen of cookies and she makes them in all sorts of flavors – vanilla, lemon, ginger, coffee, spices and of course chocolate.

When I made the cookies with her during our visit to Cucugnan, I saw how she takes them seriously, how much she loves the precision of cutting, arranging them in the oven, the art of baking. Just as bakers treat dough and bread, so she treats her diamonds.

When the cookies came out of the oven, she placed them at the boulangerie’s entrance so that they would cool faster. The smell that came from the boulangerie at that time was amazing and attracted many people who followed the smell. Thankfully we were right there when it happened to witness the magic.

Aurélie agreed to share the recipe with me so I could try it at home and share it with you. When we came back from Cucugnan I immediately baked the cookies and together with Gali we photographed them with a souvenir in the shape of an ancient wheat that we got from Roland, the Boulanger.

The recipe is just perfect and comes out wonderful even in a home oven with regular flour (unlike the flour that Aurelie uses, bio-flour of the highest quality). Don’t forget preparing the dough the day before, the dough roll should be very hard when cutting.

Chocolate Diamond Cookies
12-14 cookies

Ingredients
200g cold butter, cubed
100g fine sugar
70g egg yolks (around 3 egg yolks)
250g all-purpose flour, sifted 
60g cocoa powder, sifted 
30g dark chocolate, chopped (at least 70% cocoa)

Light brown sugar or fine sugar

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Preparation 
1. The day before: In a mixer bowl mix together butter, sugar and egg yolks.
2. Add the flour, cocoa and chopped chocolate at one time and mix until you get dough crumbs. Knead until a dough forms.
3. Roll the dough into a log, 5-6cm in diameter. Wrap in cling film and refrigerate for at least 14 hours, the dough should be very hard before cutting.
4. Preheat the oven to 170C degrees and line a large baking sheet with parchment paper. 
5. Spread the brown or fine sugar on a large plate.
6. Roll the dough log in the sugar, so that the whole roll is coated with sugar evenly (you can brush the log with the water before rolling it in sugar).
7. Slice the log crosswise 1-1.5cm thick.
8. Arrange the slices on the prepared sheet, bake for 16-20 minutes until cookies are baked and dry on the outside.
9. Remove from the oven, cool to room temperature.
10. The cookies are kept for about two weeks in an airtight container, but the truth is that they will not survive even a day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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A post shared by Paris chez Sharon (@parischezsharon)

Bon-Appétit
Sharon