Delicious, not photographic.
That’s the subtitle to this recipe.
This year I thought I’d pull out all the stops for the holidays – make fudge, stollen, licorice caramels, and four kinds of cookies, one of which would be hand decorated with icing and sprinkles. But then I experienced fail after baking fail. Still edible, but a little embarrassing to give away – they are supposed to look pretty!
But these chocolate caramel cookies . . . they are awesome, and pretty much a success!
No, the photo doesn’t show them oozing caramel – because they just wouldn’t ooze when i broke them open and needed them to ooze. But they are decadent – a dark chocolate cookie, dark chocolate chips, soft caramel inside, a little fleur de sel on top.
This recipe was created by Sally who has created an amazing blog called Sally’s Baking Addiction. She has so many awesome recipes that I wish I had the time to try out. I hope you will have time to explore them. The only change I made to the recipe was to use fleur de sel rather than coarse sea salt, because I prefer the finer grain on baked goods.
You do need to plan ahead for this one – part of my problem with all these holiday recipes, for me, has been not planning ahead for doughs that need to be refrigerated – like this one. So you can make the dough a few hours ahead, or the night before and store in the fridge.
The beautiful plate in the photo is handmade by my talented friend, Gary Leung. I guess he’s gonna need some of these cookies . . .
What you need:
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 2/3 cup cocoa
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/8 teaspoon salt
- 2 tablespoons milk
- 1 & 1/2 cups dark chocolate chips (I like Ghirardelli bittersweet, 60% cacao)
- 3 packages of Rolos
- fleur de sel for sprinkling
What you do:
- Sift the flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt into a bowl.
- Cream the butter for half a minute, then add the sugars and cream until light and fluffy. Beat in the vanilla, scraping the batter down the sides of the bowl.
- Slowly add the dry ingredients to the butter mixture.
- Stir in the milk to make a sticky dough, then fold in the chocolate chips.
- Chill for at least 2 hours. I let mine sit overnight in the fridge.
- Take the Rolos out of their packaging. Preheat the oven the 350F and line baking sheets with parchment paper.
- Scoop two pieces of dough, about a tablespoon each, and flatten them a little. Then form them around one Rolo, pushing the edges together so the caramels are sealed inside. Place on the baking sheet far enough apart so they won’t melt into each other when they spread-and they spread a fair bit.
- Before popping in the oven, sprinkle each cookie with a little fleur de sel. Bake for 11-13 minutes. The cookies will seem very soft; allow them to cool on the cookie sheet for at least 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.
- When completely cooled, store in an airtight container for a few days. I did not experiment with freezing these, but I don’t see why that wouldn’t work. I did keep a portion of the dough in the fridge to make a few days after I baked the first day, which I thought was a pretty good idea!
Trust in Kim (she will guide thee) 