The "Buttery Cookies" section of Payard Cookies offers a mouth-watering selection of bite-sized indulgences. One that caught my eye was Payard's recipe for "Raspberry Diamants," a deep pink raspberry butter cookie with sparkling edges rolled in sugar. Besides the beautiful color, I liked the fact that the raspberry flavor in the cookies comes from seeded raspberry jam -- with no need to strain out the seeds! I was sold.
The cookie dough is a mixture of softened butter, powdered sugar, egg yolk, raspberry jam, red food coloring, flour, and salt. The recipe instructs you to roll the dough into a log and freeze it for at least two hours. I just left it in the fridge for a full day and it was very firm; I don't think I missed out by not putting it in the freezer. You brush the chilled log with egg yolk, roll it in sugar (I used sanding sugar to get more texture), briefly return the log to the freezer, slice the log into individual cookies, and bake.
The pink hue of my cookies was more subdued than the vibrant ones pictured in the cookbook even though I had added the amount of red food coloring specified. Also, the edges of my cookies were brown -- which in retrospect shouldn't have been surprising given the fact that they were brushed with egg yolk -- but I wasn't expecting brown edges because the cookbook photo shows cookies with a uniform pink color throughout. If I were to make these cookies again, I might try brushing with logs of dough with egg white instead of egg yolk to reduce the amount of browning.
And I certainly hope to make these cookies again because they were addictively good. The raspberry flavor was fresh, lovely, and more intense that what I would have expected from the relatively small amount of jam in the dough. At the same time, the cookies were buttery and delicate. I loved everything about them. While my husband Tom preferred Payard's Sablés Bretons to these cookies (we had the sablés and the diamants in the house at the same time and could do a side-by-side taste test), I liked the Raspberry Diamants better; to me the bright raspberry flavor really makes this cookie stand out.
Recipe: "Raspberry Diamants" from Payard Cookies by François Payard.
The cookie dough is a mixture of softened butter, powdered sugar, egg yolk, raspberry jam, red food coloring, flour, and salt. The recipe instructs you to roll the dough into a log and freeze it for at least two hours. I just left it in the fridge for a full day and it was very firm; I don't think I missed out by not putting it in the freezer. You brush the chilled log with egg yolk, roll it in sugar (I used sanding sugar to get more texture), briefly return the log to the freezer, slice the log into individual cookies, and bake.
And I certainly hope to make these cookies again because they were addictively good. The raspberry flavor was fresh, lovely, and more intense that what I would have expected from the relatively small amount of jam in the dough. At the same time, the cookies were buttery and delicate. I loved everything about them. While my husband Tom preferred Payard's Sablés Bretons to these cookies (we had the sablés and the diamants in the house at the same time and could do a side-by-side taste test), I liked the Raspberry Diamants better; to me the bright raspberry flavor really makes this cookie stand out.
Comments