This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe comes from Baking with Dorie. There honestly couldnt have been a better cookie for this week than this one. World Peace Cookies are one of Dorie’s most famous recipes. Dorie says:
I was given the recipe in 2000 by Pierre Herme, who had created the cookie for a restaurant in Paris called Korova and so, when I included the recipe in Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City’s Best Pastry Shops, I naturally dubbed the sables Korova Cookies. I don’t have the stats to prove it, but my guess is that those cookies were the most frequently made recipe in the book.
Because the cookies had become such a hit — and because I was making batches of them at least once a week — I wanted to reprise the recipe in Baking From My Home to Yours and had it all written and ready to go when I ran into my neighbor, Richard Gold, who couldn’t stop talking about how much he loved the Korovas and how much everyone he’d ever made them for loved them too. “In fact,” he said, “in our house, we call them World Peace Cookies, because we’re convinced that a daily dose of the cookies is all that’s needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness.”
How could I not rename them World Peace Cookies!
And the story continues. Shortly after BFMHTY was published, I received a letter from a member of a California group called Grandmothers for Peace. The Grandmothers believe that peace can be achieved one cookie at a time and so, every week, members of the group bake, assemble on a street corner and hand out their cookies to passersby. But there’s a string attached — you only get a cookie if you agree to bake your own cookies and pass them on to others. The letter was a request to make World Peace Cookies the group’s official sweet. Of course I agreed and, last I heard, WPCs, recipe included, were still being passed out every Saturday.
You can read more about them here.
This 2.0 iteration has a few new ingredients – piment d’Espelette, cocoa nibs and freeze dried raspberries (<<< all affiliate links, but definitely try this iteration if you haven’t!) and I was a bit dubious… In fact, the combo works beautifully and produces an intriguing cookie with a tiny hint of heat, crunch, sweetness and tartness. It’s a winning combo!
I’ve always struggled with WPC because they are a slice and bake cookie – you roll the dough into a log, freeze it and then slice and bake. I’ve never had success with this method because the cookies crumble and shatter when they are frozen. Recently, Dorie shares a tip:
Easier slicing: Thanks to a tip from Sally Kohn, you can slice the logs when they’re just firm enough and then fully freeze them before baking.
Well, in fact this time, I sliced the cookies as soon as I rolled them – my dough was firm enough – and froze them sliced. This worked a treat but doesn’t always happen that the dough will cooperate that soon so I’ll continue to refrigerate them for a while before I slice and freeze (this is what I found works for me).
Result? These are INCREDIBLY more-ish with their subtle flavour, soft but not crumbly texture and deep chocolate-y (but not too sweet) flavour. SO GOOD. Indeed if everyone baked and ate these cookies, the world would be a better place.
Get the recipe for World Peace Cookies 2.0 on p 160 of Baking with Dorie or here.
Buy Baking with Dorie and join us baking through the book!
Buy Baking with Dorie on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store geographically closest to you). For free worldwide shipping, buy it on Blackwell’s. To support your local Indie bookstore, purchase on Bookshop.org.
Then join us over on Tuesdays with Dorie and bake your way through the book!
_________
Please note: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites. This post also contains affiliate links from Blackwell’s and Bookshop.org. This means that if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you). Thank you in advance!
_________
Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of “Baking with Dorie” for review purposes. I was not asked to write about the book, nor am I being compensated for doing so. All opinions are 100% my own.
_________
Buy my books! In the French kitchen with kids and French Food for Everyone: le goûter (after school snacks), le dîner (dinner) and le petit déjeuner (breakfast) are out now!
Click here for details and how to order!
Fond memories of these (or an iteration thereof) from Dorie’s long-ago shop in NYC.
These are fairly near perfect. NOT sweet, so yes as Mardi says incredibly moreish. Substantial though so you could have just one. (Or two.) And the texture is perfect, as they don’t crumble. Perfect for working at the computer with a cup of tea.
These look so perfect! I baked these as Christmas gifts and I’m looking forward to baking them again.
I am with you on the chill, then cut…finish with the freeze. It was so hard to cut mine after freezing! Delicious nonthless! 😊
Your cookies are very pretty. Yes, I have the same issue as you with slice and bake cookies, so I will try this tip.
Thank you for including all the background of WPC and those grandmas, I will check out the link. Look forward to making these with your handy hints.
I, too, gave the new add-ins the side-eye, but really like them! And of course, anything to make my pastry nemesis, the slice-and-bake cookie, easier to cut!
That’s the technique I used as well. Makes for a stress-free experience!