Caramel-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
There’s a lot of “stuffed” stuff that goes viral online and it wasn’t my intention to do a caramel-stuffed chocolate chip cookie. Yet there I was, faced with a few batches of caramels leftover from recipe testing that didn’t quite make the cut, and wanted to put the caramels to good use. So why not?
I don’t normally pull recipes off my blog, but the two that I did were both candy recipes, which made me realize two things: 1) The candy cookbook I’ve always wanted to write will never be, and 2) Candy is very tricky to make. The latter is due to variations in butter, cream, humidity (and in my case, humility), skill, thermometer accuracy, and the type of cookware one uses. The recipes were over ten years old and, of course, as the day I took those recipes down (because readers had issues with them) I got messages from other readers wondering where they went, as they were their favorites. So go figure…
One was a Salted Butter Caramel recipe, which was on the recipe for caramels that I learned when I went to Ecole Lenôtre cooking school. Like most professional recipes, it made a lot of caramels and I worked to whittle it down to a home-sized version. Yet whether it was a difference in French butter or cream, or the terroir (climate), it seemed tricky. I tried a few other recipes to replace it, one from a candy cookbook someone else had published, and I noticed all the metric conversions were off. (So it seems like I’m not the only one who shouldn’t write a candy cookbook!) And others just weren’t blog-worthy.
Those caramels languished in the pan for a week until I pulled out a copy of Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection, whose cover shot features – yup – a caramel-stuffed chocolate chip cookie. And now that I’m done with candy making, I can get back to baking cookies.
Alas, I wasn’t going to get off that easily…
There are no metrics given in the book, and the recipe called for “18 caramels, halved” so I had to divine what “a caramel” was – as each cookie uses three halves and I know Martha’s team could get away with calling for that, but I couldn’t. To avoid confusion, even though I got a C- in math in high school, I did some research and saw that 4 Kraft caramels equals 33 grams, which makes each caramel 8 grams (or 8.3 if you’re persnickety), so it seemed like 12-13 grams of caramel is about right, so let’s just go with one 1/2 ounce measure of caramel per cookie because I’m having painful flashbacks to high school math tests. And I was hoping to leave all that behind me years ago.
The cookies are made pretty much like standard chocolate chip cookies. You make the dough, then insert caramel inside. The cookie rounds get a quick chill in the freezer before being baked. The only precaution is to make sure you’ve completely enclosed the caramels in the cookie dough to avoid “blowouts,” which I had. If you have one, it’s not la fin du monde (the end of the world), but the caramel edges tend to burn, so remove those carefully with a large spatula while the other cookies finish baking.
Lastly, I seem to be predisposed to making oversized cookies these days. When my publisher handed me a copy of Martha Stewart’s Cookie Perfection during one of our annual dinners a year or so ago (he once told me that he wanted to get me and Martha together as we’d get along really well, but that hasn’t happened), the cover showed the cookie resting atop a glass of milk, which is a normal destination for a cookie. But when I saw how hefty the cookies were after they were baked, that glass must have been the size of a quart-sized paint pan. So expect these cookies to be big and rich – in other words, perfect for sharing.
Caramel-Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies
- 3 cups (420g) all-purpose flour
- 1 1/2 cups (270g) packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon Diamond Crystal kosher or flaky sea salt, plus additional kosher or flaky sea salt, such as Maldon or fleur de sel (optional, see headnote)
- 8 ounces (225g) unsalted butter, cubed and chilled
- 2 cups (340g) dark chocolate chips
- 2 large eggs , at room temperature
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 12 caramels, (about 1/2-ounce, 12g each)
- In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, mix together the flour, brown and granulated sugars, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. (You can also make the dough using a hand mixer or mix the dough by hand in a large bowl, although you may need a pastry blender, the large holes of a grater, or something similar to cut in the cold butter in the next step.)
- Add the cold, cubed butter and mix on medium speed until the butter is in very small pieces, about the size of peas. Add the chocolate chips and stir until combined, then add the eggs and the vanilla and mix until the dough comes together and is smooth.
- Line a dinner plate (or something similar sized that will fit in your freezer) with parchment paper or plastic film. Roll the dough into 4-ounce (115g) balls and place each on the dinner plate. If you don't have a scale, figure a generous 1/3 cup of dough per round. You should get 12 balls of dough.
- Holding each piece of dough in your hand, use your thumbs to make a deep indentation in the center, deep enough to bury the caramel in. Press a caramel, flecked with a few flakes of sea salt if you wish, into the center then push the sides of the dough up over to enclose the caramel in the center. Be sure to wrap the caramel very well inside the dough, more secure than you think to avoid volcanic caramel flows in the oven. (See the picture in the post.) Place the rounds of cookie dough in the freezer for 15 minutes.
- While the dough is chilling, position the oven rack in the top third of the oven and preheat to 375ºF (190ºC). Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
- Working with one prepared baking sheet at a time, place six rounds of dough evenly spaced apart, about 3-inches (8cm), and bake the cookies for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350ºF (180ºC) and rotate the baking sheet so the cookies bake evenly, then bake until the tops of the cookies are light golden brown, which will take about 7 to 8 minutes. During the last few minutes of the recommended baking time, I suggest you check the bottoms of the cookies to make sure they're not getting too dark. At first glance, the outer edges may appear to be getting well-cooked but you can slip a spatula under a cookie to gently check the underside. In my experience, even if the edges of the bottoms appear dark, they're likely fine in the center and won't taste burnt.
- When the cookies are done, remove the cookies from the oven and rap the baking sheet on the counter (which you can place a kitchen towel over if you're concerned that surface needs protection) a few times to give the cookies crackly tops, and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet set on a wire cooling rack. Once the cookies are cool, remove them from the baking sheet and bake the last six cookies the same way, making sure if using the same baking sheet that it's cooled down completely before reusing it.
