World Peace Cookies

These world peace cookies are the cookies that make life worth living.

Seriously, when you spend an entire Saturday working with 6 teenage kids and a scatter-brained director filming videos for your job (fun but oh so exhausting) on your sixth workday of the week and then an entire Sunday cleaning up your flooded finished basement again [for the second time in three years], including tearing up the carpet, these cookies make life just a little better. Yes folks, that’s how I spent a recent weekend.

Turns out, I made a batch of Dorie’s World Peace Cookies for the kids that Saturday to snack on after lunch and I made sure there was an ample amount left at home…for uhh, photos of course. Sure, for photos…

And it just so happens that these happen to be what both Kyle and I needed at some point (or a few) on Sunday after we sloshed our way through our family room moving furniture, tearing up carpet and sucking up water. These cookies totally saved our sanity that day.

An ample amount just happened to be sitting on the kitchen counter every time either one of us made our way out of water world for a drink at that point in the day. Thank goodness for saving food for blog photos!

So the cookies were really really wonderful! They’re made with a perfect balance of not overly sweet chocolate and sea salt and believe it or not, both Kyle and I as well as the kids I worked with that weekend devoured these cookies. 

They were certainly worth the wait after hearing about them for so long and I won’t hesitate to make them again soon.  And after the kids asked me this past weekend if I had made those cookies for them again, which unfortunately for everyone I hadn’t, I’ll go ahead and say that they’ll be making another appearance in the very near future.

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World Peace Cookies

source: Dorie Greenspan, Baking: From My Home to Yours; original recipe from Pierre Hermé

Makes about 36 cookies

• 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 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 flour, 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:

1. Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325°F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
2. Working with 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 one inch between them.
3. 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.

Serving: The cookies can be eaten when they are warm or at room temperature — I prefer them at room temperature, when the textural difference between the crumbly cookie and the chocolate bits is greatest — and are best suited to cold milk or hot coffee.

Do ahead: Packed airtight, cookies will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days (Deb note: not a chance); they can be frozen for up to 2 months. They can also be frozen in log form for months, and can be sliced and baked directly from the freezer, adding a couple minutes to the baking time.

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