Thursday, August 2, 2012

Chocolate Caramel Cookies

Chocolate Caramel Cookies - made July 28, 2012, cookie recipe adapted from Cookinfood blog

The actual chocolate caramel in individual size
This is the second of three cookie recipes I tried my first day back from Europe.  One of my favorite things to buy when I travel, especially to places like Switzerland (or just about anywhere in Europe), is chocolate.  They conveniently have nice big blocks of chocolate at any airport store and when I travel for work, sometimes that's the only place I can shop.  My favorite chocolate is the Cadbury milk chocolate caramels - they're rectangular blocks of milk chocolate filled with the best liquid caramel ever.  I bought a couple of hefty packs because I knew I wanted to use them in baking.

That lump in the middle is the Cadbury chocolate caramel
For this one, I knew I wanted a dark chocolate cookie to enrobe around the Cadbury caramel chocolates - the dark chocolate cookie should be a nice complement to the sweet milk chocolate and caramel candy.  Taste-wise, I think this worked well with exactly the contrast/complement I was looking for in flavor.  However, the dough was a bit soft to work with so I think next time I'm going to try this again with a recipe that makes a more firm dough to cover the chocolate caramel with, maybe something similar to the Cocoa Kiss cookie dough.  Because the dough was so soft, I only used it to wrap around a few pieces of the Cadbury caramels.  For the rest, I added milk chocolate chips and made as normal cookies.  The original recipe called for using white chocolate chips and I think those would've been good too.  But I didn't have white chocolate chips on hand and I didn't want to take the time to chop up the bar of white chocolate I had bought in Zurich so I went with milk chocolate chips instead.  That worked too as this was a very good chocolate cookie. You can really taste the cocoa flavor so please go with a good-quality cocoa for these cookies.

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
2/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (I used Pernigotti and Droste)
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350° F.
2. Mix the butter, brown sugar, and sugar until light and fluffy in large bowl.  Add in eggs and vanilla,  mixing well.
3. In a separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking soda and salt, and mix together. Then gradually pour those dry ingredients into the wet mixture above at a very slow speed –being careful not to spray or spill.  Stir in chocolate chips.
4. Form tablespoon-sized cookie dough balls and place on an ungreased cookie sheet, spaced at least an inch apart. (Or you can choose to chill or freeze the dough balls for a few hours first and bake later.)
5. Bake one cookie sheet at a time for 9-10 minutes or until the middles no longer look raw or wet.  Do not overbake.  Allow to cool on wire rack.

Linked to Sweet Treats Thursday
What's cooking, love?     Cast Party Wednesday

5 comments:

  1. Will you be updating the recipe in the future to include the other dough? The cookies look great...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you click on "Cocoa Kiss" in the blog post, that will take you to the recipe for that dough :).

      Delete
  2. I am Scottish and love that you made cookies with one of my favorite chocolate bars, yay!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If you have access to these candy bars on a regular basis, I'm green with envy!

      Delete