International relations

I, a peripatetic Northeastern expat living in the American Midwest, came across this recipe for chocolate-chocolate-chip cookies on a Canadian food blog. She had picked them up from an NYC food blog (or should I say the NYC food blog), who had in turn found them in a cookbook by a Francophile American, who had gotten them from a well-known Parisian chef who, apparently, came up with the original recipe. First published as Korova cookies, they are now more commonly known, at least in the food blogosphere, as World Peace Cookies for their purported ability to spread peace and harmony wherever they are baked and shared.

I am not prepared to make any lofty claims about their ability to resolve interpersonal or international disputes of any kind, but I can say with confidence that, after many years of looking for a chocolate cookie recipe to call my own, I look forward to settling down with this one.

World peace cookies
As originated (and tweaked) by all of the above
My main contributions to this multinational recipe are: 1) to add metric weight conversions for those who don’t use the US cup-and-spoon volume system and 2) to replace the slice-and-bake method with the cookie-scoop-and-bake-or-freeze-unbaked method.

2½ cups/300 g all-purpose/plain flour
2/3 cup/80 g cocoa powder
1 tsp/5 g baking soda
1¼ cups/2½ sticks/283 g butter, softened
1 1/3 cups/265 g packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup/105 g granulated/caster sugar
1/2 tsp/3 g salt
2 tsp/10 ml vanilla
1½ cups/270 g chocolate chips or chunks

Line a baking sheet with parchment. If you are going to bake immediately, preheat the oven to 325F/160C.

Mix first three ingredients in a small bowl and set aside. Cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes with a hand mixer. Add salt and vanilla, and beat for another 2 minutes.

Add the dry ingredients and mix gently, until it has mostly come together. Fold in the chocolate chips and make sure that they are distributed evenly through the dough.

Using a cookie scoop or similar sized utensil, scoop 1-inch (2.5 cm) balls of cookie dough onto the baking sheet, leaving about an inch (2.5 cm) between. You now have two options:

Option 1: Baking
Place the cookies in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes, rotating the sheet(s) halfway through. At the 10-minute mark, whack the baking sheet on a hard surface to deflate the cookies, if you like them more chewy.

Option 2: Freezing
Place the filled baking sheet in the freezer for 20-30 minutes to flash-freeze the cookies, then place in a heavy-duty freezer storage bag. Can be baked from frozen; will take 12-14 minutes following instructions above.

Makes at least 4 dozen cookies.

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