Cookie Challenge #8: World Peace Cookie

This is the last cookie of the Cookie Challenge Countdown. We hope you have had fun baking some new favourite cookies or plan to bake them over the holidays. Let us know which cookies were your favourites. A huge thank you to our sponsors: Confetti Sweets, Darling Wine Bar, the Italian Centre Shops and Heart of the Home. Please give these wonderful locally-owned, owner-operated businesses some love in 2026. We have some prizes to give away: Elaine B wins a Confetti Sweets GC; Rose A wins an Italian Centre Shop GC and Annie M wins a Darling GC. The grand prize winner of a Staub Cocotte is Joanne B. sent email Congratulations! You have all been emailed. No tips this week, just best wishes for a beautiful Christmas and New Year.

We end the challenge with the universal wish for the season: world peace. That’s a tall order for a cookie—but we need to start somewhere. We hope that baking this cookie helps keep things peaceful in your house this season. Merry Christmas from all of us at the Cookie Challenge Countdown!

by Pierre Hermé, via Dorie Greenspan
This chewy salty chocolate cookie started life in the late 1990s as a feature sweet by pastry chef Pierre Hermé for a Paris restaurant called Korova. It’s a chocolate sablé made with brown sugar and chunks of bittersweet chocolate and—revolutionary for its time it—a lot of fleur de sel. We make take salt on cookies for granted now, but this is where it all started. How did it get the name World Peace? A neighbour of cookie maven Dorie Greenspan’s thought the cookie was so good and bound to be universally loved. So loved, it would bring world peace. The dough can be recalcitrant, and muscling the dough into logs without hollow bits is a bit of a trial. You might want to bake in baking rings if you prefer a perfectly round cookie. But, no matter how they look, they will taste great.

Hit the Share this Cookie button to invite your fellow cookie fanatics to the Cookie Challenge. Every friend you invite is an extra entry for prizes.

“From our bakery to your home, I’d like to wish you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas! Thank you for supporting local this holiday season — it truly means more than you know and allows small businesses like ours to keep doing what we love. We’ll be baking right up until the last minute and will be open Christmas Eve from 8am–1pm for any last-minute holiday treats. Wishing you a season filled with joy, connection, and a little something sweet along the way,” – Kathy Leskow