Happy National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day!!!
August 4, 2012 in Cookies, Dessert, Pretty Pictures, Recipes, Sweet
When I found out this morning that it was National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day,(MAN I love these types of holidays!) I was going to just re-post my What’s Not to Love Cookies. I sincerely do love those cookies and they do have chocolate chips in them. Then I remembered I had a treasure trove of Green & Blacks just yearning to be enrobed in cookie dough. I couldn’t let down my favorite chocolate!!
I have been DYING to try a cookie that I had dreamed about the other night. THIS was my chance. *do you ever dream about your next cooking/baking adventure? I know I do quite often…obsessed much??!
This cookie combines smoked sea salt with caramel and chocolate chunks. (I know…I had to wipe the drool off my keyboard too!) They are chocolate chip cookie perfection, nirvana, Valhalla, Eden, bliss, ecstasy. You get the idea.
| Smoky Salted Caramel Chocolate Chunk Cookies |
- 1 cup white sugar
- ¼ cup water
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, cool room temp., cut into 1 inch cubes
- 1 ½ cups unsalted butter, cool room temp.
- 1/2 cup turbinado (sugar in the raw or demarera sugar)
- 3 ½ cups dark brown sugar
- 2 tsp. smoked sea salt
- 4 eggs
- 2 Tbsp. vanilla extract
- 6 cups flour
- 3 tsp. baking soda
- 12 oz to 1 lb. Green & Blacks dark chocolate chopped into 1/4 inch pieces
- Preheat oven to 360 degrees F.
- In medium pan, stir granulated sugar and water together over medium high heat until it begins to bubble. STOP stirring and allow the sugar to turn a dark golden, amber color.
- Remove from heat immediately and add cubed 1/2 cup butter. Whisk quickly to create a smooth caramel. set aside for about 20 minutes.
- In large capacity stand mixer, combine 1 1/2 cup butter, turbinado sugar and dark brown sugar. Beat until completely combined.
- Add the caramel. Don’t freak out (I kinda did at first). It’s going to melt your butter a little, then the caramel is gonna harden and make some noise in your mixer then it will all break up into beautiful little crunchy pockets of caramel. Beat on high until everything is light and cooled.
- Beat in sea salt.
- Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add vanilla.
- In separate bowl, combine flour and baking soda.
- Turn the mixer to low and slowly add the flour mixture. Mix until just combined.
- Stir in chocolate chunks.
- I used an ice cream scoop to make evenly portioned cookies (nice and big) 3 to a cookie sheet.
- Bake 11 minutes.
- Cool on cookie sheet then devour shamelessly.
You may choose not to use the turbinado and just use more brown sugar, it will still be delicious.
*You can halve the recipe too, I just HAVE to make a lot in my house so that it will last longer than 30 minutes.
Be good sweet readers. But not too good! That’s boring ;)
I am in love with these cookies! Made half batches 4x this week to give away as birthday gifts. No wonder you make doubles. Last night I used milk chocolate since I used all the dark up already. These cookies come out crispy and chewy which is not easy to do with most CCC recipes. This recipe tastes great with dark, semisweet, and milk chocolate. I have not tried any white and probably won’t since there is not much actual chocolate in it. Soon they’ll have to shoehorn me in my clothes…
I can’t stop baking (and eating) these! I did use all brown sugar the first time I made them because I could only find Sugar in the Raw in those itty bitty packets. Then I finally found it in a bulk box. It makes the texture of the cookie very different — sandier, so it adds a lovely grittiness to the cookie. I have been making the full recipe for the caramel but dumping it into only half the recipe off the cookie batter. OMG, heavenly: double the crunchy bits! For one tablespoon of the vanilla I substitute one tablespoon of homemade Irish Cream. Some days I use 2 cups of Ghirardelli 60% dark chocolate chips which are bigger than average because I’m too lazy too cut up chocolate bars. It is so hard to wait until they’ve completely cooled.
Hi Carrie!
We made these a few weeks ago and they are AMAZING – in fact, they were so good that we made them for my team potluck today. I’m sending the link to your site and the recipe – they’re just too good not to share! Hope things are well. :)
~Jody
JODY!
I am so glad you enjoyed them!! Will you be coming to Montana anytime soon?
I made the full recipe which was a little tricky with only the small capacity KA stand mixer but I have extra bowls. I <3 the dough which had lovely stands of warm caramel that I could not stop eating. IMHO dough is the best part of making cookies. When they came out of the oven, I ate 1 cookie and was thinking "meh, just another cookie recipe". My DH are 2 cookies after dinner. He never eats ,2. Before I went to bed, I had a cooled cookie and it was crispy & crunchy & delish. These taste terrific when the bits of caramel are cool and have hardened up. It was very different eating a warm one vs a cool one.
:) So glad you liked it. I loved the caramel bits in the dough :) AND the cookie. And I am so glad your husband liked them too :) Mine has always been my best and worst critic ;)
Going to make these today. Green & Black is my fave chocolate too. I love dark & the milk chocolate toffee. I always put toffee in my CCCs instead of nuts and a few shots of booze. I hope these are as food as they look. If anything like the DD CB pie…
Smoked sea salt is a brilliant addition to chocolate chip cookies!
Hi Cary -
Too hot to bake choc chip cookies in Maine this weekend! Hope to hear from you soon. Susan