Champagne sabayon, crunchy cookies

 Recipe from chef patrick

Ingredients :
A recipe of our menu 'special end of the year celebrations'.

A magic dessert that can be prepared a few hours in advance.

For 8 Champagne sabayons in individual nice glasses or cups :

For the sabayon :
8 egg yolks
200 grams (1/2 pound) of caster sugar
3/10 liter (nearly half the bottle) of Champagne Brut wine
1/4 liter (a large cup) of liquid cream

For 16 crunchy cookies ('craquelins'):
250 grams (0.6 pound) of wheat flour
150 grams (1/3 pound) of soft butter
150 grams of caster sugar
4 egg yolks (3 for the recipe + 1 for the browning)
15/100 liter (half the quantity of the Champagne used for the sabayon)of full-cream milk
3 grams (a small teaspoon) of table salt
Icing sugar

Direction :
Let's start with the crunchy cookies :
1/ Pre-heat the oven at 480°F.
2/ In a large salad bowl, pour the flour, make a hole in the middle ('fountain') and pour in it the salt, the 3 yolks, the soft butter and then the milk and knead well and make a ball with it.
3/ On the workplan slightly floured, roll out the raw pastry with a roller so that it is 3-4 millimeter thick (1/8 inch)
4/ With a pastry/cookie round cutter (2 inch diameter), make discs from the rolled pastry and place them on a non adhesive pastry tray or a cooking paper. Brush on them a mixture of 1 egg yolk + 2 soupspoons of water.
5/ Now cook them in the oven in several batches (5 minutes cooking for each batch of cookies). Sprinkle som icing sugar on the cookies immeditaely after your have taken them off the oven.
After having cooked the last batch of cookies, make a bowl of the remaininf raw pastry, roll it again to make a few cookies and repeat the preparation.
6/ Keep the cookies in a dry place (or box) to maintain their crunchy texture.

Preparation of the sabayon :
1/ In a salad bowl, pour the cream (first kept during 5 minutes into the freezer) and whip it to make a chantilly cream. Keep it into the fridge.
2/ Prepare a bain-marie : pour some water into a saucepan and select a smaller saucepan you will (in 4/ below)put into the water later on. Put the larger saucepan with water on the switched on hob.
3/ Into the smallest saucepan, put the egg yolks and the sugar and mix them well.
4/ After the mixture is well done, put the smaller saucepan into the water of the largest saucepan and whisk the mixture until it is quite hot on a finger (approx. 120°F) and frothy.
5/ Then, out of the hob, incorporate slowly the Champagne and continue to whisk until full cooling down (you can use a slow electric whip). You have made a 'Champagne sabayon'
6/ When your sabayon is really cold, incorporate in it the whipped cream (chantilly) and blend them carefully.
7/ Fill at 3/4 your glasses with a spoon then put them in the fridge.

Present the glass of sabayon (topped with a very small branch of fresh mint) on a small plate, put 1 cooking on each side and a glass of Champagne for each guest.

You and your guests should now quite reach heaven !