I taped this show last Saturday, and watched it yesterday. I was intrigued by their techniques for making chocolate chip cookies and French Sables. For the cc cookies, instead of creaming the butter, they melted it on the stove top and browned it, then incorporated the sugar into the butter, and then added the eggs, then the flour. This is their method for making chewy chocolate chip cookies. They said that melting the butter first helped the water in the butter to evaporate. I'll definitely give this method a try one of these days.

For the sables, instead of using a raw egg yolk, they boiled the egg, and pushed the cooked egg yolk through a sieve so it would be finely crumbled. They used this cooked egg in the batter instead of a raw egg yolk. This, again, was to reduce the amount of extra moisture, and make for a sandier texture. They said this was an old technique used in France. I don't know about adding a cooked egg yolk to batter, but it looks worth experimenting with. All this got me in the mood to make cookies, so instead of using their recipe, I used Dorothy Greenspan's recipe for sables, and made them lemon flavored. She said she studied how to make these in Paris, so I figured she would know what she's doing, too. Her recipe did not call for cooking the yolk first, and those cookies turned out quite tasty. I'll have to try the other way, too, just to experiment.

Here's America's Test Kitchen's recipe for French Sables:

French Butter CookiesSables

from the Episode: The Cookie Jar

Turbinado sugar is commonly sold as Sugar in the Raw. Demerara sugar, sanding sugar, or another coarse sugar can be substituted. Make sure the cookie dough is well chilled and firm so that it can be uniformly sliced. After the dough has been wrapped in parchment, it can be double-wrapped in plastic and frozen for up to 2 weeks.

Makes about 40 cookies

1
large eggÂ

10

tablespoons (1 1/4 sticks) unsalted butter , softened

1/3

cup plus 1 tablespoon granulated sugar (2 3/4 ounces)

1/4

teaspoon table saltÂ

1
teaspoon vanilla extractÂ

1 1/2

cups unbleached all-purpose flour (7 1/2 ounces)

1
teaspoon large egg white , lightly beaten with 1 teaspoon water

4
teaspoons turbinado sugar (see note)

1. Place egg in small saucepan, cover with 1 inch water, and bring to boil over high heat. Remove pan from heat, cover, and let sit 10 minutes. Meanwhile, fill small bowl with ice water. Using slotted spoon, transfer egg to ice water and let stand 5 minutes. Crack egg and peel shell. Separate yolk from white; discard white. Press yolk through fine-mesh strainer into small bowl.

2. In bowl of stand mixer fitted with paddle attachment, beat butter, granulated sugar, salt, and cooked egg yolk on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 4 minutes, scraping down sides of bowl and beater with rubber spatula as needed. Turn mixer to low, add vanilla, and mix until incorporated. Stop mixer; add flour and mix on low speed until just combined, about 30 seconds. Using rubber spatula, press dough into cohesive mass.

3. Divide dough in half; roll each piece into log about 6 inches long and 1 3/4 inches in diameter. Wrap each log in 12-inch square of parchment paper and twist ends to seal and firmly compact dough into tight cylinder (see illustrations below). Chill until firm, about 1 hour.

4. Adjust oven racks to upper-middle and lower-middle positions and heat oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 rimmed baking sheets with parchment paper. Using chefÂs knife, slice dough into ?-inch-thick rounds, rotating dough so that it wonÂt become misshapen from weight of knife. Place cookies 1 inch apart on baking sheets. Using pastry brush, gently brush cookies with egg white mixture and sprinkle evenly with turbinado sugar.

5. Bake until centers of cookies are pale golden brown with edges slightly darker than centers, about 15 minutes, rotating baking sheets front to back and top to bottom halfway through baking. Cool cookies on baking sheet 5 minutes; using thin metal spatula, transfer cookies to wire rack and cool to room temperature. Store cooled cookies between sheets of parchment paper in airtight container for up to 1 week.

Here's Greenspan's recipe, from "Baking, From My Home to Yours" After the recipe, I have a question about it.

2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

1/2 teaspoon salt, preferably fine sea salt

2 large egg yoks, at room temperature

2 cups all-purpose flour

Decorating (coarse) sugar

Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter at medium speed until smooth and very creamy. Add the sugars and salt and beat until well blended, about 1 minute. The mixture should be smooth and velvety, not fluffy and airy. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the egg yolks, again beating until the mixture is homogenous.

Turn off the mixer. Pour in the flour, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and the counter from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek - if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple more times; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for a bout 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough and the dough looks uniformly moist. (If most of the flour is incorporated but you've still got some in the bottom of the bowl, use a rubber spatula to work the rest of the flour into the dough.) The dough will not clean the sides of the bowl, nor will it come together in a ball - and it shouldn't. You want to work the dough as little as possible. What you're aiming for is a soft, moist, clumpy (rather than smooth) dough. Pinch it, and it will feel a little like play-dough.

Scrape the dough out onto a smooth swork surface, gather it into a ball and divide it in half. Shape each piece into a smooth log about 9 inches long: it's easiest to work on a piece of plastic wrap and use the plastic to help form thelog. Wrap the logs well and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours, preferably longer. (The dough can be kept in the refrigerator for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

Remove a log of dough from the refrigerator, unwrap it and place it on a piece of parchment or wax paper. Whisk the egg yolk until it is smooth, and brush some of the yolk all over the sides of the dough - this is the glue - then sprinkle the entire surface of the log with decorating sugar.

Trim the ends of the roll if they're ragged, and slice the log into 1/3-inch-thick cookies. (You can make these as thick as 1/2 inch or as thin as - but no thinner than - 1/4 inch.) Place the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving an inch of space tetween them.

Bake one sheet at a time for 17 to 20 minutes, rotating the baking sheet at the midway point. When properly baked, the cookies will be light brown on the bottom, lightly golden around the edges and pale on top; they may feel tender when you touch the top gently, and that's fine. Remove from the oven and let the cookies rest a minute or two before carefully lifting them onto a rack with a wide metal spatula to cool to room temperature.

Repeat with the remaining log of dough, making sure the baking sheets are cool before you bake the second batch.

Now, I have a question about the above recipe. In the list of ingredients, she lists 2 egg yolks, and in the instructions for mixing the dough, she says ""Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the egg yolks, again beating until..." Note, she says "eggs" plural. Then, later, when getting ready to bake, she says, "Whisk the egg yolk until it is smooth, and brush some of the yolk all over the sides of the dough..." I don't know if I was supposed to only add one egg to the batter, reserving one for later, or if she forgot to list a third egg yolk. Most of her recipes are quite clear, but this confused me. The cookies turned out fine with both yolks in the batter, so I figure she meant to add a third egg yolk.

Sally