World Peace Cookies
Call me skeptical that a mere cookie can solve our most intractable foreign policy problems, but heck, at this point I’d be willing to try just about anything. Chocolate-y, sweet and salty, they’re a guaranteed crowd pleaser at any international summit, piled in heaps next to the water pitchers on those long, shiny wood tables. Start by sifting your dry ingredients into a bowl and set them aside.
Now in a bowl or in the bowl of a mixer combine the butter and sugars and beat about 30 seconds until creamy.
Add the vanilla and salt…
and beat until light and fluffy.
Add the dry ingredients…
…and stir on low just until the the dry ingredients are incorporated.
Add the chocolate and, again, stir until just combined. Here I’m using chips because I happened to have some, but hand-cut pieces of a good bittersweet chocolate are far superior.
The dough will be almost clay-like. Turn it out onto a board…
…divide the dough in half and roll each piece into a suspicious-looking log like this, about 1 1/2″ in diameter.
Wrap each log in plastic and refrigerate at least 3 hours or freeze (which is what I usually do).
When ready for baking, preheat your oven to 350, then slice the logs into pieces about half an inch thick. If they shatter as you cut them, not big deal. Just press the pieces back together.
Lay them out on cookie sheets lined with parchment…
…and bake 12 minutes until they look about like this:
Cool and eat!
Penzy’s Spices has a great chocolate chili powder that I would put in to replace 1/2 the cocoa, you still get the chili taste, but less than fresh Jalapenos.
Nice!
Made these yesterday – they are SO easy to put together! I didn’t have any brown sugar so substituted 2/3 white with 1.5 Tbsp molasses, and they turned out very well. Thanks!
These things really are addictive, aren’t they? I don’t make them often because, well, I have trouble stopping once I start eating them. Glad they worked so well!
– Joe
Three comments:
1) These cookies (on first tasting) appear to be awesome and dangerously delicious!
2) When I took them out of the oven I didn’t realise how soft they would be, almost like a chocolate mousse? I was slightly worried at first in case I got some of the amounts wrong, but then figured they would probably firm and crisp up as they cool. They do! In case anyone else has the same panic moment, just leave to cool and they’ll be fine.
3) The end bits of the log tend to produce slightly mis-shapen cookies (hard to get a clean, flat end to the logs). IMHO the only sensible use for these slightly imperfect cookies is for the chef to use them as quality control (don’t want our friends to suffer slightly mis-shapen cookies now do we?).