Christmas Cookie Caper '08: #1 - World Peace Cookies

EDIT: I've made this recipe several times since posting this entry. My favorite way to make them is to use coarse salt and double the amount. I also add 1/2 teaspoon ground cayenne. It's an insane sensation in your mouth! I call them "World Domination Cookies!" ;)

I'm so excited. I mean I'm REALLY REEAALLLLYY excited!! I'm almost Pointer Sisters excited! Are you curious yet? It's CHRISTMAS COOKIE TIME!! My mom and I started a new tradition three years ago when we decided to bake a butt-load of all different kinds of cookies and package them in cute little tins with sparkly tissue paper. We made one for almost every person we know. After hours and hours of making dough, decorating sugar cookies, washing pans, guarding the cooling cookies from the dog, we were up to our eyeballs in cookies! After that escapade, we toned it down for the next year. The second time around we only made 5 kinds of cookies, and we made a lot LESS of each kind. But we were still sticking to our old stand-bys... sugar cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, Toll House cookies, no-bake chocolate oatmeal cookies, and double chocolate chunk cookies. This year I really want to try new recipes. I thought I'd have plenty of time to test recipes before we decided on the "final 5." However, after my mom looked over our social calendar, we quickly realized that the first weekend in December is our only free weekend to make cookies! So last night I sat down with two of my favorite baking books and chose 7 or 8 recipes from them. I narrowed it down to the 5 I really want to try. I knew my mom would find at least one to complain about. She picked the "World Peace Cookies." Of course because they have a strange name, and she doesn't know what world peace tastes like! I got home early from work today and decided to test the recipe. And so begins...
This recipe from from Baking From My Home To Yours by Dorie Greenspan. If we decide not to put these cookies in our "final 5," then you guys just got a bonus recipe! I'll post the final 5 sometime next week.

Sooo... Let's enter somewhere in the dough making process...

After creaming the butter and sugars, dump all the dry ingredients in and cover the mixer with a kitchen towel.

After pulsing a few times, my dough was still dry.
About 10 seconds more and it came together nicely.
After adding the chocolate chips, divide it into two.
Roll them up into logs and refrigerate for 3 hours.

Cut the logs into 1/2 inch slices and bake.
Mmmm don't they look so yummy??

They are very delicious! Chewy but crumbly and VERY chocolatey.I was expecting them to be saltier (given the description below), but it could be because I used kosher salt... who knows? Mom says they're awesome! They're definitely in the running for the Final 5!

WORLD PEACE COOKIES
MAKES ABOUT 36 COOKIES
From Dorie:

I once said I thought these cookies, the brainchild of the Parisian pastry chef Pierre Hermé, were as important a culinary breakthrough as Toll House cookies, and I've never thought better of the statement. These butter-rich, sandy-textured slice-and-bake cookies are members of the sablé family. But, unlike classic sablés, they are midnight dark--there's cocoa in the dough--and packed with chunks of hand-chopped bittersweet chocolate. Perhaps most memorably, they're salty. Not just a little salty, but remarkably and sensationally salty. It's the salt--Pierre uses fleur de sel, a moist, off-white sea salt--that surprises, delights and makes the chocolate flavors in the cookies seem preternaturally profound. When I included these in Paris Sweets, they were called Korova Cookies and they instantly won fans, among them my neighbor Richard Gold, who gave them their new name. Richard is convinced that a daily dose of Pierre's cookies is all that is needed to ensure planetary peace and happiness.

SERVING: The cookies can be eaten when they are warm or at room temperature ­and are best suited to cold milk or hot coffee.

STORING: Packed airtight, the cookies will keep at room temperature for up to 3 days; they can be frozen for up to 2 months.

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (11 tablespoons) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup (packed) light brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt (I used 1/2 teaspoon kosher salt)
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
5 ounces bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips, or a generous 3/4 cup store ­bought mini chocolate chips

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.)

GETTING READY TO BAKE: Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 degrees 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.