Salted Tahini Shortbread Sandwich

a little primer on perfect shortbread

I made these shortbread sandwiches for a sunglass brand event this past weekend, and I wanted to share a little bit of the shortbread wisdom I’ve picked up in my time as a pastry chef. Shortbread, although simple in its few ingredients, requires a bit of technique to achieve the buttery crumbly texture and clean sharp edges of a proper and perfect shortbread. Rolling and cutting out cookies can be a pain — sticky dough, excess flour being worked into the dough during rolling, tough cookies from the scrap reroll….the list goes on. However, I’ve mimicked the process I’ve used at every pastry kitchen I’ve worked at to make roll and cut cookies, and translated it to a home kitchen. Rolling the dough between sheets of parchment gets rid of the excess flour and sticky mess of traditional methods, and really stretches the maximum number of cookies you can punch out before the dough gets too tough to reroll. An overnight chill is crucial for cookies that maintain their shape and sharp clean edges, but I’ve also had success with a 4 hour chill.

Whipped white chocolate ganache can be especially finicky, the success of your whipped ganache depends on two keys things: high quality white chocolate made with cocoa butter and a thermometer. It seems a bit counterintuitive to try and whip room temp ganache, however if the ganache is too cold the chocolate will begin to seize and separate once agitated. At 65 degrees the fat from the cream and the cocoa butter in the white chocolate will be able to emulsify and incorporate air.

These sandwich cookies are a bit labor intensive, but a fun project if you want to spend the day baking something both impressive and delicious. These cookies inspired me to have more impromptu afternoon tea hangs with my friends this summer :)