This grapefruit and fennel cookie is the perfect mid-afternoon snack with a hot cup of tea. The sablés are rich and buttery, with a subtle warmth and anise flavor from toasted and crushed fennel seeds, and a touch of brightness and zing from grapefruit zest. Using honey and browning the butter in this sablé recipe helps balance some of the more savory and bitter flavors with sweet caramely notes.
Trust me when I say that these flavors really work together. The combination creates a little thrill for the taste buds as the fennel hits the palate, followed by the zestiness of the grapefruit, which is then smoothened by the butter and honey. The small flecks of fennel throughout the cookie also offer nice visual appeal.
A sablé is essentially a shortbread cookie with the addition of egg, resulting in a rich buttery dough with a crumbly or sandy texture. The base of this recipe was inspired by and adapted from a combination of Claire Saffitz’s brown butter and sage sablés and her Honey-Vanilla sable.
These sablés transform your ordinary tea cookie into an exciting experience worth savoring. The cookies taste even better after a day or two, once all of the flavors have had a chance to meld.
Honey sablés with grapefruit and fennel
Course: Cookies and barsDifficulty: Quick bake32
cookies30
minutes12
minutesThese honey sablés are rich and buttery, with a subtle warmth and anise flavor from toasted fennel seeds, and a touch of brightness and zing from grapefruit zest. These cookies are perfect when enjoyed alongside a cup of tea and taste even better after a day or two. If you don’t enjoy the slight bitterness from grapefruit, you can try substituting with orange.
Ingredients
2 tsp fennel feeds
2 sticks unsalted butter
2 cups (250g) all-purpose flour
1/4 cup (28g) cornstarch
3/4 tsp diamond crystal kosher salt (1/2 tsp morton salt)
1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar (+ 1/4 cup for finishing the cookie)
1/4 cup (84g) honey
1 egg yolk
2 tsp grapefruit zest (plus extra for coating cookie)
2 Tbsp freshly squeezed grapefruit juice
Instructions
- Place fennel seeds in a saucepan over medium heat and toast for 30-60 seconds until fragrant. Remove from the pan and set aside. Place the butter in the pan over medium heat until melted. Cook, stirring occasionally, until the butter has turned golden brown and the flecks of butter solids in the pan are a deep amber. The butter will go from loudly sizzling and then will start foaming and quiet down as it gets close to browning. Once browned, immediately transfer into a mixing bowl and set aside. Let cool about 40-60 minutes until the butter turns mostly solid. To speed up the process, you can refrigerate it, but check every 10 minutes or so, as you don’t want the butter to become super hard.
- While waiting for the butter to solidify, crush the fennel into smaller pieces using a mortar and pestle or by using the bottom of a glass to push down on and grind the seeds. It’s okay if there are some larger pieces, you just want to break up the full seeds. Set aside.
- In a new mixing bowl, add the flour, fennel seed, cornstarch, and salt. Stir to combine and set aside.
- To the mixing bowl with the browned butter, add the granulated sugar and grapefruit zest. Using a whisk or electric beater, cream the butter with the sugar until well-combined and you have a smooth, fluffy mixture. Then beat or whisk in the egg yolk, honey, and grapefruit juice. Add in the flour mixture and mix until there are no more patches of flour.
- Place a rectangle of plastic wrap on the counter and dump the mixture onto the plastic wrap. Use your hands and the plastic wrap for help to shape the dough into a log about 12 inches long–if too difficult to work with, you can create two 6-inch logs. The dough may feel loose at this stage but it will firm up in the refrigerator. Use the plastic wrap to help form the final shape and to smooth out the log. Place in the refrigerator for at least two hours or overnight.
- When ready to bake the cookies, preheat the oven to 350F. Place 1/4 cup granulated sugar onto a plate along with one teaspoon of grapefruit zest. Use your fingers to massage the zest into the sugar until the sugar feels a little bit like moistened sand. Remove the cookie log from the fridge and role it in the sugar and zest mixture until fully coated. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or a silicone mat and cut 1/4-inch coins from the log. Place the cookies on the baking sheet and bake for about 10-14 minutes, rotating halfway through, until golden brown. Let cool completely before eating.
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