Dark Chocolate Cookies with Caramel Filling from Sprinkle Bakes

Dark Chocolate Cookies - made dough May 29, 2023, adapted slightly from Sprinkle Bakes

1 cup unsalted butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

1 egg yolk

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups (250 grams) all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup (43 grams) black cocoa powder

1 cup (5 ounces) caramel bits

1 tablespoon water or milk

Sea salt flakes for garnish

1. In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Add egg yolk and vanilla extract, beating until just combined.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, black cocoa powder and salt. Add dry ingredients in two additions, mixing on low speed, until just combined.
3. Roll dough into small dough balls and roll each ball in granulated sugar. Press/stamp into cookie molds or mooncake molds. Chill for 15 minutes or freeze before baking.
4. When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees and line baking sheets with parchment paper. Evenly space stamped cookies and bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest on baking sheets for several minutes before transferring to wire rack to cool completely.
5. In a small saucepan, melt caramel bits and water or milk until completely melted and smooth. Pipe into center indents of the cookies and garnish with sea salt flakes.

I've been wanting to try this recipe for awhile so I could use my cookie stamps from Williams Sonoma but since they were best with a caramel filling, I couldn't send them in care packages. But my church had a potluck for a graduation celebration for one of the Sunday School students so I got the opportunity to try the recipe and share the results with others (as opposed to me eating them all).

You can tell by the dark chocolate appearance that this used black cocoa which also contributed to the Oreo-esque flavor of these. Which paired perfectly with the sweetness of the caramel filling so flavor-wise, this worked really well.

You can also tell from the pictures above and below that I got inconsistent results in the stamped cookies. Part of that was user error. The dough was a little dry. I managed well enough with stamping out the first two-thirds of the dough by warming the dough in my hands before stamping. But the final third was more floury so I ended up adding more and more vanilla extract until I could get the dough moist enough for handling. It isn't hard to tell that the cookies that spread more and turned out bigger were from that last third that had more moisture.

The other tricky thing (also user error) is I eyeballed each piece of dough before I stamped them so I didn't consistently use the same amount of dough for each cookie. Some turned out thicker than others. Which wouldn't have been a big deal except for the last third of the dough; more dough meant more spread.

Oh well, despite my errors, these still turned out pretty well and I liked the dark chocolate and caramel pairing. The texture of the cookies was more like chocolate shortbread so don't expect a regular chocolate cookie texture of chewy moistness. It wasn't dry but it definitely falls into the shortbread camp. I skipped sprinkling with flakes of sea salt because I already used salted caramel and I'm not big on salting my cookies.