Will these chocolate cookies bring world peace? I don't know, but I'd settle for a house sale...

Well, we were without internet access yesterday... so I was not able to get the post up for the weekly Wednesday Treat Day. Jeff, however, did bring in the treats and all was well - I decided to add some variety this week and made two different recipes!

Let's start off with the Lemon Almond Biscotti that I made first... I'm sure you are thinking "geez, do these people ever make anything other than biscotti?!" We do, but we also are crazy for these crunchy cookies. With lots of softened butter, I think this was the stickiest dough that I've had to work with for biscotti - however, the recipe did warn that the dough would be very soft. Don't be tempted to use extra flour - either use a spatula to deal with the stickiness or lightly wet your fingers. Any extra liquid from using wet fingers will evaporate fairly quick as soon as you place the baking sheet in the oven.

With paper-thin almonds and almond extract in the dough, almond is certainly the predominant flavor... but rubbing the juicy lemon zest into the granulated sugar makes for a subtle, yet tantalizing light lemon flavor. While the cookies do get crisp from being twice-baked, they have another layer of crunch from the addition of yellow cornmeal. Since there were no chunky mix-ins, the baked loaves didn't crumble at all and were very easy to slice. I didn't think about it at the time, but I would have loved a light drizzle or maybe a half dunk into some creamy melted white chocolate.

I probably don't even need to say much about these World Peace Cookies as I'm sure you've seen them more than a few times posted on other sites. We both thought that these absolutely lived up to the hype and it was pretty hard to give these away! You may also see these called Korova Cookies as they is what they were originally called. These slice and bake cookies were a snap to throw together and you could keep the dough in the refrigerator or freezer to bake off as needed. They have a fairly unique texture - not chewy nor crisp, but somewhat sandy and crumbly with a rich chocolate flavor.

How these bittersweet cookies stand out from the rest of the pack is from the battle of sweet against the salty addition of fleur de sel. You could just use a fine sea salt, but we both thought this extra special touch was worth it. You may notice when you go to slice the dough that it has a tendency to crumble a bit as you hit a chunky piece of chocolate - these cookies are so sturdy though that you can just press them back together and you would never know the difference!

So... I'll go ahead and admit it - I've already made another batch and have two more logs in the freezer. You know, for those stressful days I'm sure are heading our way as we deal with selling the house. Besides, this way I'll have something to bake before a showing - maybe these cookies will be what actually sells this place!

Recipes
Lemon Almond Biscotti
World Peace Cookies