Handheld Console Shortbread

It's up to you.

13 detailed steps, from preparation to service.

1. Weigh the dough and keep the decor apart

   Place a bowl on the scale and separately weigh 220 g of flour, 60 g of ground almonds, 140 g of cold butter and 80 g of icing sugar. Reserve in other containers the 150 g of jam and the 20 g of finishing icing sugar; they do not go into the dough. Cut the butter into small cubes of about 1 cm. Prepare two sheets of baking paper and a roll.

2. Rub together with your fingertips

   Pour the flour, ground almonds and 80 g of icing sugar into the bowl; mix with a spoon. Add the cold butter cubes. Take small handles between your fingers and rub gently to coat and crush the butter in the dry ingredients, for 3 to 4 minutes. Stop as soon as the mixture looks like coarse sand, without a large piece of butter; do not knead it for long with the palms, which would warm it.

3. Add the egg without kneading

   Break the egg in a small bowl, check that it contains no shell, then beat it with a fork with the vanilla teaspoon for about twenty seconds. Pour it all into the bowl. Mix with the spatula, then gather the crumbs with your hands by pressing them against each other. As soon as the dough fits into a ball, stop: it does not need to become elastic.

4. Cool the dough for an hour

   Flatten the ball in two 2 cm thick discs; they will cool more regularly than a large ball. Wrap them and place them in the refrigerator for 1 hour. The dough should be firm, but be able to bend slightly without breaking. If it has become very hard, leave one disc 5 minutes on the worktop before spreading it; keep the other cold.

5. Prepare plates and spread to 3 mm

   Turn the oven on at 170°C in conventional oven setting (no fan) and place the grill in the middle. Cover two baking paper baking tray. Lay a disc of dough between two other sheets of paper and pass the roll from the center to the edges by turning the dough regularly. Aim for a uniform thickness of 3 mm: too thin areas would brown before the others. Remove the sheet from the top without abruptly pulling.

6. Cut the shapes into pairs

   With a ruler and a knife, cut 36 rectangles of 6 x 4 cm. Round the four corners very slightly with the blade, without digging a screen or a hole. Lift each piece with a flat spatula and place it on a plate, 2 cm from its neighbors. Gather the offcuts without kneading them and spread them a second time. Any dough remaining after the 36 pieces can be baked into additional small cookies, on a separate plate, or frozen raw; do not enlarge the planned pieces.

7. Strengthen and cook one baking tray at a time

   Slips the cut shapes in the refrigerator for 15 minutes so that they keep their contours better. Then bake a baking tray in the middle of the oven for 10 to 12 minutes. Start looking at 10 minutes: the edges should be barely golden and the center still clear. Remove the plate with oven gloves and cook the second in the same way; keep it cool while the first one is cooked.

8. Cooling without breaking cookies

   Leave the cookies on their baking tray for 5 minutes: at the exit of the oven they are still fragile. Then slide a spatula underneath and place them on a wire rack. Wait about 30 minutes, until they are completely cold to the touch, above and below. Set aside 18 bases and 18 tops of similar size.

9. Garnish and close the 18 sandwiches

   Turn the 18 bases, flat face up. Do not put sugar between cookies: it would hinder the adhesion of the jam. Stir the 150 g of jam with a spoon to soften it, then divide it between the 18 bases, or about 8 g per cookie. Spread it leaving 3 to 4 mm free at the edge. Put a top on each base and press very gently in the center, just so that the jam almost arrives at the edge. Let the sandwiches sit flat while you prepare the decor.

10. Make two separate chocolates

    Chop the 70 g of white chocolate with a knife and put them in a small, perfectly dry bowl. Pour 2 cm of water into a saucepan and simmer gently, then lower the heat. Place the bowl above: its bottom should not touch the water. Stir with a spatula until only a few small pieces remain. Remove the bowl from the heat and keep stirring so the residual heat melts them. Wipe the bottom of the bowl; no drop of water should fall into the chocolate. Then melt the 25 g of dark chocolate separately with the same method, in a second dry bowl. Prepare a small spoon and a cornet; do not mix the two colors. Let the chocolates soften slightly so that they thicken a little before placing them on the cookies.

11. Cover the consoles with a white background

    Spread the 70 g of white chocolate between the 18 tops, or about 4 g per console. Spread it with the back of a small spoon in a thin layer, up to a few millimeters from the edge, without completely masking the corners of the cookie. Place the consoles flat and let it take 15 to 20 minutes in a cool room. Black should only be added when the white background no longer spreads under a slight contact.

12. Draw screen, cross and buttons

    Place a small cone of baking paper in a glass, point down, and half fill it with a spoon. Fold over the top to keep chocolate away from your hand, then cut a 2 to 3 mm opening at the tip. Pipe a test line on the paper: a continuous ribbon should flow when you squeeze gently. Put the 25 g of dark chocolate melted in the cornet. On the top half of each console, draw a fairly wide screen rectangle; fill it with a thin round trip of chocolate. Then draw a thick cross under the screen on the left and two to four big buttons on the right. Keep all parts flat on the icing, without hinge or moving elements.

13. Let freeze and finish the edges

    Let the decors take 30 minutes in a cool room, until the chocolate no longer sticks to the finger. To use the 20 g of finishing sugar without soiling the screens, protect the tops with a sheet of paper and lightly powder the edges of shortbread visible with a strainer; the excess sugar remains in the strainer. Move the consoles by supporting the two cookies with a small spatula. The remaining chocolate in the cone can harden on paper and be reused, without unnecessarily thickening the design.