Tuesdays with Dorie—World Peace Cookies

I have decided to award my own personal Nobel peace prize for 2009 to Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Hermé for their important efforts to bring World Peace Cookies to kitchens on several continents!

And we have chestnuts to thank for this union of writer and chef. Dorie met Pierre Hermé while working on a story for the New York Times about chestnuts. While in Paris on vacation in the early 90s, she phoned Fauchon (a luxury food shop made even more famous by Hannibal Lector in Hannibal) to find out how candied chestnuts (Marrons glacés) were made and was told to drop by and speak to the chef pâtissier there at the time, who was Hermé. Within minutes of meeting, a friendship was born. Since that encounter, Dorie has helped translate the genius from his lab into desserts we can create in our own kitchens.

One of the most famous creations is this humble sablé cookie. After tasting the all-American chocolate chip cookie, Hermé decided to tinker with the recipe since he found the original too sweet!

"The first time I had chocolate chip cookies in the United States," says Hermé, "I didn't like them at all. I thought they were too sweet, and the gooeyness was not very appealing." — Food & Wine

So, what does he do? He comes up with a double-chocolate chip cookie that's sweeter but the sweetness is counteracted by delicate fleur de sel (meaning "flower of salt" that comes from the Guérande region of France). And not just a pinch but half a teaspoon. The salt rounds out the sweetness and brings out the chocolate flavor. Plus, this cookie is of the slice-and-bake variety, which is on the opposite spectrum of the type of patisserie you'd expect from such a chef.

This pleasantly salty, melt-in-your-mouth, chocolate cookie can bring peace to your world (or at least keep the kids from fighting while they're eating these morsels of chocolate heaven).

Recipe: World Peace Cookies

Makes: about 36 cookies

Ingredients:

1¼ cups all-purpose flour

1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature

2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon fleur de sel or ¼ teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous ¾ cup store-bought mini chocolate chips (Hermé uses Valrhona)

You can find the recipe for World Peace Cookies in the book Baking: From My Home to Yours (affiliate link) by Dorie Greenspan or here or here. To see how the rest of the TWD group fared with this week's recipe, click here and then click on each blogger! Thanks to Jessica of cookbookhabit who chose the recipe for this week and will post the recipe.

Tasting Notes
This cookie demonstrates Hermé's perfect marriage of the "three Ts": taste, temperature and texture. They melt-in-your mouth and are best eaten warm with the chocolate slowly oozing out leaving fingers stained with kisses of salted chocolate. In fact, one of my daughters doesn't like chocolate chip cookies but asked to take one of these in her lunch today!

If you don't want to make them in your own kitchen, you used to be able to order them online from Hermé's online boutique for 14 EUR, $22 CAD or $18 US! Hermé recommends tea, coffee, Maury, Banyuls Vintage or water, but I prefer milk with my cookies.

"Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you."
— All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum found on the website for Canadian Centres for Teaching Peace

Recipe for Next Week (February 10)
Floating Islands on pages 401-402 chosen by ME!

A few other links to World Peace Cookies (aka Korova cookies or sablés au chocolate)

• David from Leite's Culinaria

• Deb from Smitten Kitchen

More to Explore:

• Index of Recipes
• Visual Recipe Index