One of the best things to do at home to keep warm in winter is bake cookies. It is an annual ritual that I enjoy every year at this time. When I was young I was a cookie monster – loving and eating so many cookies – but they were made by my sisters’ or lady friends’ hands.

One day when I was a kid, my father brought home cookies similar to these Sablés. I still remember the sweet and buttery richness. My father was not a particularly educated person, but when it came to food he was very gourmet, and he wasn’t frugal about it at all. He is the one responsible for me inheriting the addictive habit of eating cookies while sipping French brandy or Scotch whisky in a hand warming glass on cold nights (a habit I still cannot stop).

He was a pro at enjoying good things, because he was a wine merchant… meaning it was his job.  His expertise was in European wines and food.  Another great cookie he introduced me to was a sandwich cookie with a dark rum-soaked raisin cream in the center. They came in a fancy white box with a blue and gold label from a famed pastry shop. It was always a big treat and became an unforgettable memory and taste from my childhood.

Anyway, this Viennese Sablé cookie is very fun to make. You don’t have to chill the dough, so you can make them quickly and eat them as soon as they come out of the oven. They are dangerously delicious! I particularly love cookies with a big butter flavor in winter, don’t you?

Recipe adapted from BAKING CHEZ MOI by Dorie Greenspan: According to her story; I first learned to make nontraditional chocolate version of these cookies with Paris Pâtissier Pierre Hermé, and he first learned to make the originals at Wittmer, the famed pastry shop in Brussels. At Wittmer, the cookiese flavored with vanilla and piped with an open-star tip into a tight W—the initial for both Witmer and Wien (German for Vienna, where the cookies are thought to have invented).