Pierre Hermé & Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies
Author Notes: Of all the cookies you will bake and eat during the holidays (and beyond), this is the one people will remember. They're fine and sandy like a sablé, but with a friendly, soft chew, a bit like American chocolate chip. They're made up of well-salted, well-buttered cocoa dough, with generous pockets and wisps of chocolate feeding through. "I've seen World Peace Cookies made with peanut-butter chips, with cinnamon, with icing, and with gluten-free flours. I've seen them huge and small," Greenspan said. "I don't think you can do much to make them better and happily, there's little you can do to ruin them. Except overbake them." If in doubt, pull them out early -- they'll firm up as they cool. Adapted slightly from Baking: From My Home to Yours (Houghton Mifflin, 2006). —Genius Recipes
Makes about 36 cookies
- 1 1/4 cups (175 grams) all-purpose flour (see note)
- 1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder (see note)
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (150 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 2/3 cup (120 grams) packed light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon fleur del sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 5 ounces (150 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips (no pieces larger than 1/3 inch), or a generous 3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips
- Note: If measuring by volume, it's important to measure the flour and cocoa lightly, as follows: stir flour briefly in the container or bag, spoon into the measuring cup until it's heaped above the rim, then level it with a straight-edged knife or spatula. If you dip the measuring cup into the container, you'll have more flour and cocoa and a drier, crumblier, more difficult dough.
- Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.)
- Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 °F. Line two baking sheets with parchment or silicone mats.
- 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.
- 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.
- This recipe is a Community Pick!
More Great Recipes: Desserts|Cookies|Chocolate
Topics: Cookies!
8 months ago Idalu
Lovely cookies though just a bit too buttery. I didn't have any problems with the dough crumbling. I used a good Danish brand butter (Lurpak) and some good quality latin american dark chocolate (70%) that I chopped. Instead of draping the bowl in a towel after adding the dry ingredient, i mixed slowly with a spatula and then pulsed a few times on low speed. Freezed the dough for 24 hrs and baked for 12 mins. They are good and I'll make them again.
8 months ago JOEY
Measured all ingredients by weight; baked on parchment-lined cookie sheets for exactly 12 minutes; let cool as directed. These are the best chocolate cookies ever!!
9 months ago DAVID
These were great. Everybody loved them. Thank you for sharing.
9 months ago Michelle
This is great, not too sweet! And someone even called it "the best chocolate cookie I've ever had". For anyone who had trouble with this recipe, make sure to carefully measure all ingredients. Including the butter, according to the package each stick of my butter should have weighed 113.4g but it actually weighed 126g. You won't regret making this!
10 months ago Lindsay Frucci
I'm a pretty experienced cook and I carefully weighed all the dry ingredients using my old, but trusty food scale, but my "dough" was beyond dry and crumbly - in fact it was impossible to form it into anything! I finally added a bunch of melted butter, rolled the logs and they're in the fridge now to be baked tomorrow. I mean chocolate and butter - how bad can they be, but I'd like to try these again - following the recipe. The ratio of dry ingredients to the butter seems to err heavily on the dry side? Anyone else run into the same issue??
10 months ago CarlaCooks
I just made this using the weighted ingredients and I had no problem with them. Did you weight out your butter as well as the dry ingredients? Sorry to hear they didn't work... these really are tasty cookies.
10 months ago Lindsay Frucci
I didn't weigh the butter but according to the weight on each stick, 11 tablespoons should have weighed exactly 150 grams. Clearly I messed up the dry ingredient weights somehow.
9 months ago Janet
I weighed everything and had the same experience. I thought the dough was dry but went ahead anyway. What a disaster. Too sweet, and the density of the chocolate was overpowering. I have half the logs in the freezer and I guess they can't be salvaged at this point. An expensive disappointment.
25 days ago Tracy
I had the same problem and I weighed all of the ingredients. I will bake them later today.
10 months ago Sheila Lins
This recipe has no eggs or I missed something? Just to be sure.
10 months ago Emily Love
you're not missing anything, no eggs is correct!
about 1 year ago Courtney C
These are delicious and easy. Perfect when you need a chocolatey-salty treat.
over 1 year ago Kara
I've made these a few times now and frankly, they are AMAZING. The first time i followed the recipe exactly as described and they turned out perfect. Second time i unfortunately ran out of plain flour (only had about 100grams!) and substituted the final 20grams with self-raising. They still turned out fantastic; fantastic enough to have a friend declare her praise very loudly. A+ totally one of my go to recipes now!
over 1 year ago liz okamura
I made these "exactly" as the recipe states "except" when I didn't. Holy moly is right!
over 1 year ago Alaina Cillis
I made these according to recipe, except substituting coconut sugar in for both sugars and using tapioca flour instead of all-purpose to make them gluten-free. They turned out exceptionally good, having a thin, delicate, crackly crust on top. All this despite accidentally adding 40% extra butter and having to do some math to bring the other ingredients into proportion. It's a winnah!
12 months ago Steven Williamson
why bother commenting? you didn't even make these cookies.
12 months ago Gift
I love what you did. We need to be creative and allow recipes to suit our lifestyles.
25 days ago Tracy
Sounds delicious!! I must try this gf version .
over 1 year ago Emily Love
has anyone else had problems with these spreading out into huge flat pancakes? the first time I made these they were perfect, and I have been cursed ever since. I follow the recipe exactly!
over 1 year ago Michelle Maruyama
Mine spread out when i baked on Silpats!
over 1 year ago Emily Love
I hadn't even thought of that, thank you!! Will be trying them again on parchment paper..
over 1 year ago Robin
Help!! I must have mixed my dough too it was to moist and sticky. Is that what I did wrong. I managed somehow to get it into a sticky mess of a log and they are in the fridge so hoping they will bake okay. I bake a lot so j really don't know what I did wrong. Any suggestions or comments I would appreciate.
11 months ago dianeshuggins
I use the waxed paper to help shape them into logs, touching the dough very little.
10 months ago Emily Love
I like to stick the lump of dough in plastic wrap and roll it in the plastic wrap! Mess free :)
over 1 year ago evalunta
These cookies are fabulous. Ice been wanting to make these for awhile but was kind of annoyed by the preciousness of the recipe instructions. I mean, the thing with the towel and 5 pulses? But I followed all the rules and the turned out great. And then I made them again without all the extra fancy steps and you know what? They turned out great again. I even used chocolate chips that I gave a rough chop, not fancy dark chocolate. They were still fantastic. As my husband says, they're a keeper.
over 1 year ago Salvegging
Maybe I'm weird but I liked these best baked 14 min! Delicious.
over 1 year ago EmilyC
I'm kicking myself for having waited so long to try these. They're perfect!
almost 2 years ago Danielle
These were fantastic! I made them for Christmas exactly as described above, without a kitchen scale-- however I did accidentally throw in an extra T of butter, but I think it ended up helping and making the dough more workable!
I loved them so much that I decided to make a second batch with a variation. I kept my extra T of butter, added 1/2 tsp of cayenne to the sifted dry ingredients, and topped each cookie with a piece of Falksalt's smoked flake salt before baking. The end result was amazing-- multiple guests at my Christmas party asked if they could take some home. Highly recommend this version if you like heat!! The smoked salt was fantastic, but I think any flake salt would do.
almost 2 years ago betty888
Update: I made these again for my family, this time gluten free. I used Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free 1-to-1 Baking Flour, and they turned out surprisingly well - very similar to the real deal. I just replaced the flour with the GF four.
almost 2 years ago FoodIsLove
I just finished making my second batch of these. They are awesome. I did make mine larger...rolled the dough to 2" size and baked them for 15 minutes to compensate for the larger cookie. They are wonderful. I know others are having problems with these being crumbly, I did not experience that. What I always do when I make logs of dough is to form them into a rough shape and then slam them on the counter a few times to compact the dough, then do the final forming. It does seem to help.
almost 2 years ago Sara Perelli-Minetti
I made these yesterday and let me tell you, they are fantastic. I baked mine for 13 minutes, not 12 (my oven can be wonky), and was very careful when measuring my dry ingredients. I also decided to see what would happen if I added a little vanilla fleur du sel as a finisher and let me tell you, it's amazing!! You can make vanilla fleur du sel by just adding a vanilla bean to your salt. Overall, really fantastic cookie with rich chocolate flavor and lovely texture.
almost 2 years ago betty888
I will start by saying that I am not a huge chocolate-lover. I know, shoot me. I do enjoy it now and again, but when I have a sugar craving, I would grab a blondie over a brownie. That said, I was looking for a cookie that didn't contain nuts, made it tonight. Holy moley - it is delicious. I followed the recipe to the letter, except I chilled the dough for 2 hours instead of 3. I didn't have any issues with crumbling dough, and I kept an eagle eye on them after I put them in the oven. No problems at all. They are seriously good - something about the sandiness that reminds me of fudge. Just wonderful.
9 months ago visionsofsophia
Carla - I was your Secret Santa and I loved them so much that this Christmas I recreated them, candy canes and all!