The lockdowns this year have been playing with our nerves, but there have been some positive aspects to this situation. As a pastry lover, I especially appreciated the lives of famous chefs. Not only did they share recipes with us, but they also made them live, which makes a big difference in the outcome you can get when doing them yourself. Seeing the steps, the gestures, and the textures helps a lot. Even though I cook a lot, some recipes give me a hard time, and they’re not always the most complicated ones. If you follow me, you must have already seen some posts about my failures; I’m not hiding it; it happens to everyone. And one of the recipes that gave me the most frustration was the Spritz [also called Viennese shortbread]. But that was before the famous pastry chef, Pierre Herm\u00e9\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I tried many recipes from different chefs, but I simply couldn’t get a good result. I usually ended up with a very dense paste, extremely difficult to pipe. I would spend hours on it and get weird shapes and sore arms. But I kept trying because I simply love those little cookies. So when I saw that Pierre Herm\u00e9 was going to do life on Instagram, I can’t tell you how excited I was\u2026 After carefully listening to all the advice, I tried it out, and this time everything went perfectly well, the dough is easy to handle, and my shortbread finally looked good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Here is the chef’s advice that made the difference :<\/p>\n\n\n\n
1\/Most importantly, the butter must be at room temperature and soft. There is a reason we call it “beurre pommade” in french [literally, butter ointment], the butter must have the texture of an ointment, super soft. This is the key to success with this recipe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n