The recipe is from Pierre Herme, famous Parisian pastry chef. There is a story behind the strange name; he first created this recipe for a restaurant off the Champs-Élysées called Korova. Dorie Greenspan published this recipe in a few of her cookbooks and instead calls them World Peace Cookies. That is how amazingly good they are.
Note: Since living in Europe I've had to stop relying on store-bought chocolate chips. I initially thought cutting-up chocolate bars was a little annoying, but soon realized the taste is so much better. If you think your chocolate chip cookies are good now, try adding some high quality chocolate and then see what you think!
For these cookies, I cut up portions of Lindt chocolate bars - I used equal parts 80% cocoa and milk chocolate - and happily ate the rest (although that wasn't my intention). The combination of cocoa powder, dark chocolate chunks and milk chocolate chunks made for a to-die-for-super-rich-triple-chocolate-cookie. Yum.
And since the brown sugar here is really dry and coarse, I used 1/2 cup sugar and 1/4 brown sugar instead. But if you have soft, light North American brown sugar, don't adjust a thing. I think it would make for a slightly moister cookie.
You will need:
1 1/4 cups flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup plus 3 tablespoons (150 grams) unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon fleur de sel (or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips
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Sift the flour, cocoa and baking soda together.
In a large bowl, beat the butter until soft and creamy. Incorporate both sugars, salt and vanilla extract.
Pour in the flour mixture and gently mix (pulse if using a electric mixer) just until the flour disappears into the dough — work the dough as little as possible once the flour is added! The dough will look a little crumbly. I like to add the chocolate pieces when a smidgen of flour remains on the surface of the dough this allows the chocolate to be incorporated without over-mixing.
Gather dough 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 or parchment and refrigerate for at least 3 hours - 3 days or freeze 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.)
Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment.
Working with 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 — don’t be concerned, just press the bits back onto each cookie. Don't skimp on the thickness here, because as soon as they begin to cool they will flatten significantly.
Arrange on the baking sheet and bake the cookies for 12 minutes — they won’t look done, nor will they be firm, but that’s the way they should be. Transfer to a cooling rack and let the cookies rest.
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If you happen to only skim the directions below, here are a few important things that should standout:
The dough may be a little crumbly and you'll think it will be hard to roll into logs, be patient, it will work. It's not a beauty contest, they are just cookies so the longs don't have to be uniform; Slice your cookies thick because they will loose a lot of their height as they cool; When your timer goes off, they wont quite look done and they will still be soft. Don't worry, they will firm-up as they cool and because they don't contain any egg, you really don't have to worry about under cooking - butter, sugar and chocolate never hurt anyone, right?
What I really recommend is this: double the recipe and freeze two of the rolled cookie logs for baking later. You won't regret it.
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