La Sablésienne All-Chocolate Shortbread Cookies 100g

There is chocolate in two places here, and that makes all the difference. Cocoa powder colours and flavours the sablé dough, while chocolate chips give the crisp little biscuit an extra hit of cocoa in some bites. The butter is still very much present: it gives the biscuit its short, tender break instead of the chew of a chocolate-chip cookie. La Sablésienne's scalloped sablés are small enough to enjoy with a cup of coffee, but sufficiently chocolatey to make that cup feel like dessert. The maker describes its 1670 range as richer in butter and egg than its other sablés, with the egg worked into the dough. That helps explain the delicate texture behind the deeper cocoa flavour. The recipe listed for this 100 g sleeve contains fresh butter, 10.4% chocolate chips and 3.2% cocoa powder. It is a straightforward combination, done with enough care that neither part disappears. Start with one plain; then try a second beside a drink and see whether you prefer the buttery finish or the little bursts of chocolate.

• Coffee after dinner: Pour Mokaflor Decaffeinato and set a few sablés alongside it. The coffee gives the cocoa some depth without asking everyone to stay awake for the next three hours. Coffee is sold separately.
• Orange and chocolate: Put a spoonful of Maison Perrotte Orange, Madagascar Vanilla & Ceylon Cinnamon Preserve beside the biscuits, rather than on top of them, so they keep their snap. Its orange brings brightness to the cocoa; the preserve is sold separately.
• The easy dessert plate: Add two sablés to a scoop of vanilla ice cream or a bowl of plain yogurt. Break one over the top just before serving and leave the other whole. It looks considered, takes a minute, and lets the chocolate biscuit remain the star.

The 1670 on this range is a nod to the Marquise de Sablé, whom La Sablésienne links to the little round biscuits served at the court of the Grand Condé. The biscuiterie itself began in Sablé-sur-Sarthe in 1962. That is a good dinner-table distinction if someone assumes the box has been around for three centuries. This all-chocolate version brings a modern pantry favourite to the traditional shape: cocoa goes into the dough, and chips go in too. The result still behaves like a sablé, with a crisp edge and a buttery, crumbly middle, rather than trying to be a miniature brownie. It is a familiar French biscuit with its chocolate dial turned up, ready for a coffee break, a small gift, or the last plate on the table.

Ingredients and allergens: Wheat flour, fresh butter (milk) 19.8%, sugar, chocolate chips 10.4% (sugar, cocoa mass, cocoa butter, soy lecithin), cocoa powder 3.2%, eggs, salt. The seller also lists tree nuts as an allergen; confirm the exact precautionary wording on the incoming pack.

Store in a cool, dry place, away from heat and moisture.