Chocolate Chip Caramel Cookies

I was in the grocery store the other day perusing the shelves of chocolate chips and other flavored morsels, I was picking up some butterscotch chips for oatmeal scotches, when I saw caramel bits.

These were intended to be used as a replacement for the square caramels that you melt down to make caramel apples with, but inspiration struck.  A few years ago Peperage Farms had a soft baked Chocolate Caramel cookie that I absolutely loved and I haven’t seen for quite some time.  I didn’t know if it would work, but I thought I’d go for it.

The important thing about the cookies was that they had to be soft. Cake like or chewy it didn’t matter, but they did need to NOT be crunchy.  One of my favorite shows on Food Network is Good Eats, and a while back he did a show called “Three Chips for Sister Marsha”  where he went over the types of chocolate chip cookies.  I don’t remember everything about the show, aside from it being funny, is that if you have more sugar than butter you will not have a crispy cookie.  So, when picking out the recipe that I wanted to use I looked for one with more sugar than butter.  The one i settled on was from my Better Homes and Gardens Red Checkered Cook Book.

Chocolate Chip Caramel Cookies
adapted from Better Homes and Gardens

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup caramel bits

• In a large bowl beat the butter until soft.

• Add the sugar to the butter.  Beat until light and fluffy.

• Add the baking soda, eggs, and vanilla.  Blend until well combined.

• Mix in the flower.  It may get too stiff to use the electric mixer, if so, use a wooden spoon to mix it together.  Once the flour  is mixed in stir in the chocolate chips and the caramel bits.

• I use a cookie scoop to scoop the cookie dough onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  Make them about two inches apart.  Bake in a 375 degree oven for about 10 minutes.  I find that taking them out of the oven when they still look a little doughy in the middle is the best way to make sure that they don’t get over cooked.  If you ask my 4 year old the hardest part is the baking.

• After you remove the cookies from the oven let them cool on the cookie sheet for a few minutes and then remove to a cooling rack.

These cookies turned out really well.  I was a bit concerned that the caramel wouldn’t turn out right, but it’s just the right amount of chew to it.  I really did enjoy them.  The caramel on the bottom of the cookies melted (of course) and so I needed to use a metal spatula to remove the cookies to cook, but once they cooled they weren’t sticky any more.  Just wonderful and delicious.

My best friends husband absolutely loved these, and he’s a chocolate chip cookie connoisseur.  His favorite part?  The carmal wasn’t hard and it wasn’t so soft that it was running allover the place.

and just because I can 🙂