Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies

For whatever reason I was really struggling to figure out what to bake tonight. For mid-week baking, I like to keep things simple and save the complex baking for Sundays. Also my baking cabinet is weak and needs some restocking and I’ve been promising a nut-free cookie next, so I was limited in more ways than one today.

Regardless, my coworkers would be more disappointed by a cookie-free Thursday than an experiment gone wrong, so I figured I would try out these new carmel bits my mom threw in my bag a few weekends ago from her King Arthur Flour purchase (http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/caramel-bits-16-oz). I figured I would try something simple to start, so I added the caramel bits to my classic salted chocolate chip cookie.

Ingredients:

  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
  • 3/4 cup granulated sugar
  • 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 2 large eggs
  • 2 .5 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • 1 1/2 cups of carmel bits (or carmels chopped in small pieces about the size of a chocolate chip)
  • Coarse sea salt

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Step 1: In the mixer, beat butter, granulated sugar and brown sugar until creamy. Add in eggs and vanilla and mix well. A little baking action shot below.

Step 2: Add in flour, baking soda, and salt. I have a ghetto way of sifting these together with the back of a wooden spoon once I dump them all in the mixer, but if you have time you should actually sift these ingredients together in a separate bowl.

Step 3: Add in two and a half cups of chocolate chips.

Step 4: Add in one and a half cups of the caramel bits. If you don’t have these (which you most likely don’t) you can use regular cararmels like the Kraft ones pictured below, just make sure you chop them up pretty coarsely into small even-size bits.

Step 5: Scoop even size balls of dough onto a parchment lined or sil-pat lined cookie sheet. Normally I go with the melon-scooper size. But Amazon prime failed me this week and I still have not gotten my new cookie scoop after Sundays debacle …. so I went with the larger ice cream scoop I had. It still made 4 trays of 8 large cookies.

Step 6: Top with a dash of coarse sea salt.

Step 7: Bake for 12-14 minutes. If you make smaller size cookies, you might want to go with 10-12 minutes. Because of the sticky caramel you will need to let these sit on the tray for 3-5 minutes after them come out of the oven to cool. I smushed a few trying to lift them off the sheet.

These cookies are salty, caramely, and delicious hot out of the oven. I have a feeling we might run into the same issue as with the rolo-stuffed cookies I made a few months back where once they cool they have a totally different (harder) consistency. So my reccomendation is for eating these cookies the next day, microwave these for 10-15 seconds before enjoying to get the gooey melty goodness.

Now I understand that by using the big cookie scoop instead of the melon scooper tonight means less cookies … which I claimed I had learned my lesson last week to not bring limited numbers of cookies to my coworkers.I guess it will just be a real-life Hunger Games in the office tomorrow … only the strong and smart secure their cookies early! And getting on the secret cookie distro list is like getting a gift from sponsors 🙂  Alright enough with the nerd references … enjoy these sweet and salty treats!