All We Are Saying is Give Peace a Chance

 

This week’s bake are World Peace Cookies from Dorie Greenspan of Food52.  They’re a Chocolate Shortbread cookie filled with white and dark chocolate chips.

Here is a brief history of the World Peace Movement from Wikipedia:

The first formal peace movement in the United States was the New York Peace Society, founded in 1815 by theologian David Low Dodge, followed by the Massachusetts Peace Society. The groups merged into the American Peace Society, which held weekly meetings and produced literature that was spread as far as Gibraltar and Malta describing the horrors of war and advocating pacifism on Christian grounds.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869–1948) was one of the 20th century's most influential spokesmen for peace and non-violence, and Gandhism is his body of ideas and principles Gandhi promoted. One of its most important concepts is nonviolent resistance.

Gandhi was the first person to apply the principle of nonviolence on a large scale. The concepts of nonviolence (ahimsa) and nonresistance have a long history in Indian religious thought, and have had a number of revivals in Hindu, Buddhist, Jain, Jewish and Christian contexts. 

The anti-Vietnam War peace movement began during the 1960s in the United States, opposing U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.  In 1965, the movement began to gain national prominence. 

The peace movement continued into the 2000s, with protests against the invasion of Iraq.  A series of protests across the globe was held on February 15, 2003, with events in about 800 cities. The following month, just before the American- and British-led invasion of Iraq, "The World Says No to War" protest attracted as many as 500,000 protestors to cities across the U.S.

Reverend Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., stated :  “We adopt the means of nonviolence because our end is a community at peace with itself. We will try to persuade with our words, but if our words fail, we will try to persuade with our acts.”

Here is the recipe for Pierre Hermé & Dorie Greenspan's World Peace Cookies

Ingredients:

1 1/4 cup (175 grams) all-purpose flour (see note)

1/3 cup (30 grams) unsweetened cocoa powder (see note)

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 stick plus 3 tablespoons (150 grams) unsalted butter, room temperature

2/3 cups (120 grams) packed light brown sugar

1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar

1/2 teaspoon fleur del sel or 1/4 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

5 ounces (150 grams) bittersweet chocolate, chopped into chips (no pieces larger than 1/3 inch), or a generous 3/4 cup store-bought mini chocolate chips

Instructions

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 — let it warm just enough so that you can slice the log into rounds and bake the cookies 1 minute longer.)

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 325 °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.

Here are some pictures of the bake:

Have a Great Day !