Courtesy Deborah Jones

Enjoy Thomas Keller’s perfect chocolate cookie recipe. Doesn’t everyone need chocolate any day of the year? Otherwise, it just isn’t Valentine’s Day, right? So, I love Keller’s chocolate cookies anytime of year, but pull out your heart shaped cookie mold and you have an over the top, delicious chocolate cookie sure to please. Be careful, sometimes this recipe doesn’t last past the dough stage, if there are too many hands in the kitchen.

SERVINGS  6-8 cookies

INGREDIENTS

For the Chocolate Sablé Dough

12 oounces butter

8.5 ounces sugar

13.4 ounces All Purpose Flour

Pinch baking soda

Pinch salt

4.5 ounces cocoa powder

DIRECTIONS

In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream the butter and sugar together using a paddle on medium speed.  Sift the dry ingredients together and add to the butter and sugar mixture until combined.

 Refrigerate the dough for 30 minutes.

 Roll the dough out to a thickness of 1/8 of an inch.  Cut out cookies using a heart shaped cutter.

 Refrigerate the cut cookies for 20 minutes.

 Bake at 325F for 12 minutes and let cool on a rack.

For the White Chocolate Ganache Filling

7 ounces heavy cream

7 ounces white chocolate

1 ounces butter

DIRECTIONS

Chop the white chocolate and place in a bowl.

Bring the heavy cream to a boil and pour over the chopped white chocolate and stir until smooth. Add the butter and stir until incorporated.

Allow the cream mixture to cool.

Transfer the mixture to the bowl of electric mixer. Using the whisk attachment, whip until light and the mixture holds its shape.

Refrigerate until needed.

To Assemble

Pipe the filling onto one cookie and top with another.

NOTE

Feeling lazy? Pick up the phone and call Bouchon Bakery at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. Order these chocolate TKO cookies or a variety of unique deserts. For Valentine’s Day, you might have to decide among cherry,  heart shaped  lollipops, linzer cookies, red velvet cupcakes, or shortbread cookies with “Kiss Me” and “I Love You” messages. Or, just order them all!

By the way, I must say I absolutely love the photographs of Thomas Keller’s foods by Deborah Jones. She is an incredibly talented photographer and her photos  are mouth watering. Makes me want to run to the kitchen to cook just about anything she photographs.

– The Gourmet Review