I made cookies for my qual committee. I knew it wouldn’t affect their decision, but I thought maybe it would put them in a better mood so they would be nice to me! (They were). I offered them the cookies and one of my committee members said, “Ooh, cookies. Are we allowed to eat them or is there some rule against that?” (I think there might be).
My advisor said, “Oh, it’s fine, Zoe makes cookies for us all the time.” (It’s true). Sweet, my advisor’s got my back.
These cookies are called “World Peace Cookies”, aka, if everyone ate them we could finally have world peace. Perfect for a blustery Wednesday afternoon qual exam.
Here’s where I found the recipe: http://smittenkitchen.com/2007/01/in-which-world-peace-eludes-me/
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 11 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup light brown sugar
- 1/4 cup white 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
Mix the flour, cocoa, and baking soda together with a fork (or sift it… okay, you’re supposed to sift it but I didn’t.)
Using your stand mixer, beat the butter until it’s nicely creamy. Add the sugars, salt, and vanilla extract and beat for 2 more minutes.
Pour in the dry ingredients and mix just until the flour disappears into the dough.
Add the chocolate chunks and mix a little more.
Work the dough into two logs, each 1 1/2″ in diameter. Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate for at least 3 hours, or overnight.
It was tough to get a good photo of the logs before slicing.
…Wait 3 hours. I used this time to make another batch of cookies – regular chocolate chip cookies – in case these didn’t work out. Wouldn’t want my committee members eating gross cookies! Baking also distracted me from my exam…
Slice the logs into 1/2″ thick slices. The recipe is very detailed and notes that your cookies might crumble a bit during this step. Mine did, but it was okay.
A lucky uncrumbled cookie.
Bake on a cookie sheet for 12 minutes at 325 degrees F. Again, the recipe was detailed here and absolutely correct. It says your cookies will not look or feel done at this point, and mine didn’t. Take them out anyway! Basically, they are very limp at this stage but as they cool down they will harden. There are no eggs in this recipe so underbaking isn’t really an issue.
Once they cool, you can test them! I have to say, mine did not look like the pictures on the internet say they’re supposed to look. But they tasted great. It seemed like mine expanded/melted more and also developed some holes in them, like they had bubbled during baking. Maybe my oven was too hot? We don’t have an oven thermometer but I have always estimated that my oven runs 25 degrees hot and adjust accordingly. I use this correction because it seems to lead to the right bake time for most recipes. These cookies seem extra sensitive to temperature so maybe my oven is off by more than that. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t sift… I should probably sift.
Funny looking cookies.
Well, this was almost 3 months ago but just writing out this post is making me hungry! Maybe I should bake some more cookies today… In fact, I’m inspired to make a second attempt at these to get them to look right.
