During the holidays, French butter cookies offer sophistication and style from simple pantry ingredients. That is, if you can capture their elusive sandy texture (sablé is French for sandy). Most of the recipes we came across had only slight differences in ingredient proportions, but they all baked up without the delicate crumbliness that defines this cookie. To create the hallmark sandy texture of sablés—light, with an inviting granular texture similar to shortbread—we did some detective work. Let us show you what we learned and how to adapt this recipe to make other holiday cookie recipes.