Salt and Pepper Cocoa Shortbread

This week’s Tuesdays with Dorie recipe was selected by Tia of Buttercream Barbie. She chose Salt and Pepper Cocoa Shortbread. This is an unusual shortbread in that you roll the dough into a log and make them into slice-and-bake cookies. The shortbread also contains salt and pepper, which may seem strange. I have made a couple of cookies that contain pepper and I like the flavor in cookies. You can get the complete recipe for these cookies on Tia’s blog, and don’t forget to check out all of the other Tuesdays with Dorie bloggers and their interpretation of this week’s recipe.

I was happy that this was a slice-and-bake cookie, as those don’t seem to take too much time. I didn’t change the recipe much at all. I did use dark cocoa powder, which gave the cookies a deep, rich color. For the salt, I used Hawaiian Pink Diamond Sea Salt. My husband and I just returned from Hawaii and we picked up a couple of different types of salt. (We also bought lots of macadamia nuts: those recipes are on their way!) This particular salt contains Hawaiian Alaea volcanic clay, which gives it a beautiful pink color. It doesn’t taste that different, at least to me, but it sure looks great!

These cookies came together so quickly, but they were a little hard to shape into logs. The dough is sticky and gets all over your hands, the kitchen counter, etc. I rolled mine on a Silpat and that worked ok. I topped some of the cookie with extra salt and I wish I would have done that will all of them as that added a lot. The texture of these cookies is excellent; they just melt in your mouth. I liked the salt and pepper in these, and I think they would be good with cinnamon and some other spices. These were unusual and very good!

Recipe from Baking from My Home to Yours by Dorie Greenspan, on page 128