World Peace Cookies...and world peace

I just began this blog a while ago. I figured I might like to join in with some of the cook and bake alongs that other bloggers have...and I HAD to have a blog...so here we are. I was thrilled to have a few pictures on Tastespotting and foodgawker and my kids are really jazzed to watch how many people from all over the world are stopping by at looking at their favorite soup...it is really amazing how small this world has become.Thanks to everyone for stopping by and saying hello!

How I wish I could send everyone in the world one of these World Peace Cookies and we would instantly have World Peace...now wouldn't that be something!

Anyway...I am part of a Christmas Cookie bake-along at a food board I belong to and my pick was World Peace Cookies from Dorie Greenspan. I have been meaning to bake these cookies since I first got her Paris Sweets cookbook, what seems like a million years ago...I just never seemed to get to it. They were called Korova Cookies then and they are a Pierre Herme recipe. So yesterday I got to it and I am not at all sorry. They are a bit like a sandy, salty , brownie. Very rich...and very nice with a cup of coffee. I used Rademaker Dutch cocoa and Valrhona 60 % chocolate that I had a grand time hacking up with my trusty serrated knife...a messy job, but someones got to do it! And I did use French Fleur de Sel.
The recipe is very exact...as Dorie's always are , so you know just what to expect.
Yes...they did crumble a little bit when slicing, but were easy to repair...and they did take exactly 12 minutes in my oven....my kids wolfed a few down with some ice cold milk and pronounced these a keeper. I do not know what I was waiting for...except maybe not to have these go directly to my tushie!

WORLD PEACE COOKIES
Excerpted from Baking: From My House to Yours by Dorie Greenspan (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). Copyright 2006 by Dorie Greenspan.


Makes about 36 cookies

I once said I thought these cookies, the brainchild of the Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé, were as important a culinary breakthrough as Toll House cookies, and I've never thought better of the statement. These butter-rich, sandy-textured slice-and-bake cookies are members of the sablé family. But, unlike classic sablés, they are midnight dark — there's cocoa in the dough — and packed with chunks of hand-chopped bittersweet chocolate. Perhaps most memorably, they're salty. Not just a little salty, but remarkably and sensationally salty. It's the salt — Pierre uses fleur de sel, a moist, off-white sea salt — that surprises, delights and makes the chocolate flavors in the cookies seem preternaturally profound.

When I included these in Paris Sweets, they were called Korova Cookies and they instantly won fans, among them my neighbor Richard Gold, who gave them their new name. Richard is convinced that a daily dose of Pierre's cookies is all that is needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness.

* 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
* 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
* 2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
* 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
* 5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous 3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips

1. Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together.

2. Working with a stand mixer, preferably fitted with a paddle attachment, or with a hand mixer in a large bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until soft and creamy. Add both sugars, the salt and vanilla extract and beat for 2 minutes more.

3. Turn off the mixer. Pour in the dry ingredients, drape a kitchen towel over the stand mixer to protect yourself and your kitchen from flying flour and pulse the mixer at low speed about 5 times, a second or two each time. Take a peek — if there is still a lot of flour on the surface of the dough, pulse a couple of times more; if not, remove the towel. Continuing at low speed, mix for about 30 seconds more, just until the flour disappears into the dough — for the best texture, work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added, and don't be concerned if the dough looks a little crumbly. Toss in the chocolate pieces and mix only to incorporate.

4. Turn the dough out onto a work surface, gather it together and divide it in half. Working with one half at a time, shape the dough into logs that are 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Wrap the logs in plastic wrap and refrigerate them for at least 3 hours. (The dough can be refrigerated for up to 3 days or frozen for up to 2 months. If you've frozen the dough, you needn't defrost it before baking — just slice the logs into cookies and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)

Getting Ready to Bake:

5. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.

6. Using a sharp thin knife, slice the logs into rounds that are 1/2 inch thick. (The rounds are likely to crack as you're cutting them — don't be concerned, just squeeze the bits back onto each cookie.) Arrange the rounds on the baking sheets, leaving about 1 inch between them.

7. Bake the cookies one sheet at a time for 12 minutes — they won't look done, nor will they be firm, but that's just the way they should be. Transfer the baking sheet to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest until they are only just warm, at which point you can serve them or let them reach room temperature.


The dough....






Cooling....