When I stepped outside the other day, the air was chilly and smelled like campfire smoke. Maybe it’s too many readings of The Night Circus, but that combination always makes me think of caramel. By itself, it’s a little too sweet for me, so my main goal with this recipe was balance. What happened was a cookie full of different flavors and textures: melty, bitter dark chocolate, sweet and chewy caramel, crunchy sea salt.
All you do is mix the ingredients, bake, and sprinkle with some sea salt while they cool. You’ll also want to press a few extra chocolate chips and caramel bits into the cookies to make them prettier before you bake them.
It took me three tries to get these right. First, I tried using soft caramel candy, which sort of boiled over onto the cookie sheet and made for some very lopsided, sticky cookies. Next, I added too many chips and they fell flat. If having a cooking blog is teaching me anything, it’s how to keep rolling with failure!
But even when they didn’t quite work, I’d see my family walking around eating handfuls of broken cookie that they had pried off the pan, so I knew I was on the right track. But now that I’ve figured it out, it should be easy for you. No failure necessary.
sea salt + caramel + dark chocolate chip cookies
makes ~14 (large) cookies
time: 1 hour
ingredients
2 ¼ cups flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, chilled and cut into cubes*
1 cup brown sugar, packed
½ cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 ¼ cups dark chocolate morsels
¾ cup caramel baking bits (you can use caramel chips in a pinch)
sea salt, for sprinkling
*if using salted, only use ¼ tsp of kosher salt
directions
- Preheat the oven to 325. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Whisk the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cornstarch, and salt together in a medium mixing bowl.
- Using a mixer on the medium setting, cream the butter and sugars together in a large mixing bowl until thoroughly combined, 4-5 minutes.
- Beat in egg, then add vanilla.
- Gradually mix in dry ingredients until just combined.
- Add chocolate chips and caramel bits and fold through.
- Chill dough for 30 minutes.
- Gently form the dough into balls (I used about ¼ cup of dough per cookie) and place onto the prepared baking sheet. Press a few extra chocolate chips and caramel bits into the top.
- Bake for 13-15 minutes, until done around the edges. Sprinkle with sea salt.
- Let them sit on the pan for 10 minutes before moving them to a cookie rack to cool.
These cookies have become a regular staple in my kitchen! They are fast and easy to make, plus they lend themselves well to sharing. I am often not well stocked on dark chocolate morsels, but this recipe works with semi-sweet chips (you just lose a bit of the richness). I use a lovely flaky salt for final topping.