Organic vegan shortbread with banana and chocolate chips from La Sablésienne, in the 110 g carton — the larger format of the same biscuit that also comes in a small pack.
Which size to buy. The small pack exists to answer the question of whether you like banana in a biscuit, which is a genuinely divisive matter. This 110 g carton is the one to buy once you know you do — better value, and the carton keeps the biscuits from breaking in a cupboard, which matters with something this short.
A sablé is not a cookie, and the difference is structural. Sablé means “sandy” in French, and it describes the texture precisely: a biscuit that crumbles cleanly rather than snapping or chewing. That comes from a technique called sablage — rubbing the fat into the flour before any liquid, so every flour particle is coated in fat and cannot readily hydrate. Flour that cannot hydrate cannot develop gluten, and no gluten means no chew. It is the same principle behind good shortcrust pastry, and it is why the order of mixing matters more than the ingredient list.
The name is also a place. Sablé-sur-Sarthe, in the Pays de la Loire, where the biscuit is traditionally attributed to the household of the Marquise de Sablé in the seventeenth century — a pleasing coincidence, since the town's name and the texture's name are the same word.
Making it vegan is the hard part. A traditional sablé is butter and egg yolk, and both do structural work — butter for the sablage and the flavour, yolk for richness and binding. Removing them without producing something dry and mealy is a real technical problem, which is why most vegan shortbread disappoints.
Why banana works in baking and barely registers in fresh fruit: the aroma comes from esters, chiefly isoamyl acetate, which develop only as the fruit over-ripens. A green banana has almost none; a black one is full of them.
Organic and vegan. The range includes a sesame biscuit made alongside — check the pack for allergens.
Available at Só Verde, an organic concept store in Foz, Porto.