Checkerboard Sablée

White Sablée Recipe
2/3 cup cake flour
1 1/3 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup confectioners sugar
1 cup cold butter, cut into cubes
1 whole egg
1 egg yolk (plus additional if needed)

- In a large bowl combine the flours, sugar and salt.
- Add the cold butter and lightly toss into the flour with your hands.
- Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter (or a fork) until the butter is no smaller than baby peas.
- Add the whole egg, and egg yolk and cut in with pastry cutter for about 3 minutes, or until the dough looks like gravel.
- If by pinching a piece of dough and it doesn't come together, or if it just looks too dry add another egg yolk at this point. If not, don't.
- Dump out the dough on a work surface and knead just long enough to get it to hold together.
- Roll into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Move onto chocolate dough.

Chocolate Sablée Recipe
3/4 cup flour
1/3 cup confectioners sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup plus 2 tbs cold butter cut into slices
1 egg

- In a large bowl combine the flour, sugar, cocoa powder and salt.

- Add the cold butter and lightly toss into the flour with your hands.

- Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter (or a fork) until the butter is no smaller than baby peas.

- Add the egg and cut in with pastry cutter for about 3 minutes, or until the dough looks like gravel. 

- Dump out the dough on a work surface and knead just long enough to get it to hold together.

- Roll into a ball, cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

To make the checkerboards you'll need 1 egg white, lightly beaten to "glue" the dough together.

- Take the white dough ball and roll out flat, like you would for a pie crust, about 1/4 inch thick. Brush with the egg white.

- Roll out the chocolate dough ball the same thickness as the white and put it on top of the white. 

- Trim the dough so you have even edges. 

- Then cut the dough in half so you have two even squares/rectangles of dough. Brush one of the layers with egg white.

- Flip over one of the cut pieces of the dough and place on top of the other so you have a layer of alternating: white, black, white, black.

So here in the background you have your flat pieces of dough, and in the foreground is the cut pieces.  I've cut off the edge a strip, laid it on it's side, cut another strip and flipped it over so the colors alternate and laid on top of the other. 

- Then, using a sharp knife, cut a thin slice, about 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick and lay it on it's side, brush with egg white. Then cut another slice, the same thickness as the first, flip over and lay it on top of the other slice so white comes up against black.

- Roll gently with your rolling pin to press the dough together.

- Repeat until you've used all the dough and have a bunch of black and white strips. 

- To ease the cutting process place all the strips on a piece of plastic wrap and put them in the fridge for about 30 minutes, or to speed up the process put them in the freezer for about 5-10 minutes.

- Using a sharp knife cut the dough into about 1/2 squares and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. 

- The cookies will be pretty tiny, so you'll want to watch them closely so they don't burn. Bake for about 8-12 minutes or until barely brown, at 350 degrees F. 

With any remaining dough you can mix the white and black together to make marbled cookies like these.

Or you can even just make stripes, like these.