Chocolate-chip cookies fresh from the oven—who hasn’t succumbed to devouring them straight off the baking sheet, the chocolate still melted and gooey? The French, that’s who. At Payard Pâtisserie, the French bakery where I worked in New York, none of my French colleagues had ever had a homemade chocolate-chip cookie.

Talk about a cultural divide. I teased my co-workers mercilessly about their deprived childhoods. I brought them oatmeal raisin cookies and snickerdoodles, introduced them to Oreos and Girl Scout Thin Mints, determined to bridge the gap.

In return, my French friends taught me a whole range of French-style cookies, called petits fours secs (translated, this means small cakes or cookies from the oven, unfrosted or unfilled). Not as homey and never as large as American cookies, petits fours secs (peh-tee FOOR seck) are subdued, polished, yet equally enticing. These butter cookies are perfect for when you want to end a meal with coffee and just a few sweets, or when you want to give charming homemade gifts.

Sophistication and simplicity in the same cookie

What ties this refined group of cookies together is that none are too sweet, all are small enough to eat in one or two bites, and, while they may seem fancier than, say, Toll House cookies, the doughs are all uncomplicated and easy to prepare. The basic method for all the cookies is the same, and it’s simple: cream the butter, slowly add the sugar until thoroughly combined, beat in the egg, and then fold in the remaining ingredients. At the pastry shop, we used almond flour in addition to all-purpose flour, but you’ll get excellent results using almonds that you finely grind in a food processor. Success lies in precision: careful measuring for consistent results, shaping the logs evenly so they slice into uniform shapes, chilling the buttery dough thoroughly so it doesn’t soften when you handle it, and rotating the baking sheets halfway through baking so all the cookies brown evenly. Another tip is to chill the sliced cookies before baking if they’re at all soft.

将黄油和鸡蛋带到室温。同样重要的是，它们都处于相同的温度范围内。如果黄油太软并且鸡蛋直接从冰箱中直接出现，则在混合过程中，黄油会变硬成很小的斑点，并且看起来会凝结。（如果发生这种情况，请不要惊慌：您只需要更长的时间，直到击球手平滑为止。）您仍然会得到美味的饼干。）

彻底奶油黄油，直到变软并变白为止。这可能需要长达五分钟的时间，但是它将确保其余的成分很容易融合到黄油中。混合过程中彻底刮擦碗；烘烤期间，面团中的黄油散落的斑点会融化，并导致饼干失去整洁的形状，散布成斑点，并不均匀地烘烤。

As soon as the last ingredients are well incorporated, stop the mixer. Mixing any more than necessary means you run the risk of a less tender cookie.

Lightly flour both the work surface and the knife. Once the dough is shaped, chilled, and ready to slice, you want to be sure it doesn’t stick to the counter. If the dough does start to stick as you slice it, put it in the freezer for ten minutes or so to firm up.

Freeze the dough and bake what you need. These recipe yields are big (especially for the checkerboard cookies), which is helpful during holiday time. But if you don’t feel like baking huge amounts at a time, just freeze the shaped logs, defrost them in the refrigerator the night before you plan to bake, and then bake as much as you need.