My husband loves all things caramel. So, for his birthday this year, I decided I needed to come up with the perfect salted caramel cookies. I’ve been working on this recipe for MONTHS, which hasn’t been easy, it’s hard to keep a cookie recipe in development a secret when your husband is a nosey Cookie Monster! If I’m being honest, I didn’t know if I was going to get it PERFECT in time for his birthday! But I made it, and with a couple of days to spare!
If you’re asking me, salted caramel cookies must be chewy and extra caramel-y. This can be a little bit tough to accomplish. It’s not hard to end up a crunchy cookie thanks to all of the extra butteriness of caramel. Too much caramel, and it’s all stuck in your teeth and the enjoyment of eating the cookie gets overshadowed by needing to find a toothpick! After plenty of trial and error, I finally got the perfect batch of salted caramel cookies for my caramel loving husband!
Recipe Evolution
It’s not a Honey, I’m Hungry cookie recipe if it doesn’t start with browned butter, so of course, I started there. Brown butter was the only ingredient I was 100% sure about. If you’re not interested in why I chose this over that, just go ahead and skip this section!
- Light brown sugar over dark brown sugar. Usually, I’m a lover of dark brown sugar. I love the deep flavor it adds. In this case, the dark brown sugar made the cookies too dark in color and the molasses took away from the caramel flavor. Light brown sugar was the clear winner here! The caramel flavor shines through, and the color stays a perfect light golden/caramel brown.
- Kraft Caramel bits AND toffee bits. When I used all caramel bits, the cookies were just too sticky and chewy…but not in a great way. Did they taste great? YES, but I knew I could do better. I tried butterscotch chips, but it just tasted like a butterscotch cookie. I tried Heath bar bits, but the chocolate made it a caramel chocolate cookie. It was DELISH, but not what I was going for. After all of the trial and error, I stood in the baking aisle and spotted the toffee bits with no chocolate. The combo of the caramel bits and the toffee bits gave the perfect caramel forward flavor without being too chewy! Winner winner!
- Resting the dough. Professional bakers will probably shame me for this, but I am not in the camp that every cookie recipe needs to rest before baking. Some HIH recipes call to rest the dough, others don’t. Sometimes we just don’t have the luxury of blocking out TWO different parts of the day for baking! That said, are these cookies good without a rest. Yes, they are. Are they GREAT if you rest the dough for at least a couple hours. OMG, YES! The texture and caramel flavor really go to the next level after a good rest in the fridge. Do it if you can, but if you can’t, still make the cookies!
Keys to Success
- Take a refresher on brown butter. If you’re new here or you haven’t made brown butter in a while (or ever), I did a whole blog post on it. It’s one of my favorite ways to make a recipe extra special!
- Line your baking sheet. Before I owned silicone baking mats there was a 25% chance I was going to burn the bottom of my cookies. That 25% chance was the 25% of the time I’m out of parchment paper.Line that baking sheet! It makes clean up a snap AND you almost can’t over cook the bottom of the cookie before the tops and centers are fully cooked. It’s even more important for this recipe in particular to ensure the caramel bits don’t burn before the cookies are cooked. I’ve linked my favorite silicone liner and easy to work with parchment paper below. For the love of cookies (and easy clean-up) use these tools!
- Cookie Scoops. Off the top of my head, I can think of 6 HIH recipes where I recommend these scoops! I can confidently say, it won’t be the last. If you haven’t added a set of spring loaded scoops to your kitchen equipment, what are you doing? The time you save quickly scooping perfectly portioned balls of dough is worth the $13ish dollars for a set of 3!
Salted Caramel Cookies
Equipment
- Large mixing bowl
- Wooden spoon
- cookie sheet
- medium cookie scoop
- parchment paper or silicone baking liner
- large skillet
- Whisk
- Measuring cups and spoons
Ingredients
- 1 cup salted butter 2 sticks
- 1 cup light brown sugar packed
- ½ cup granulated white sugar
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 2 large eggs
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 2 ½ cups all-purpose flour
- 1 ½ cups Kraft caramel bits
- 1 cup toffee bits
- 2 teaspoons flakey sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350° F
- In a large skillet, add the butter and melt over medium to begin making the browned butter.
- While stirring continuously, allow the butter to come to a boil and watch the butter closely as it begins to boil. After coming to a boil the butter will begin to develop a foam on top before it turns to an amber brown. Once the foam is gone and the butter has turned amber brown, approximately 3-4 minutes, remove from heat and transfer to a medium mixing bowl to stop the cooking and set aside to cool.
- Stir together the light brown sugar, granulated sugar, vanilla, and baking soda and add to the cooled butter. Stir 3-4 times with a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, just to start incorporating.
- Add the eggs to the sugar/butter mixture and stir until mixture is homogeneous
- Add the flour, and stir with the wooden spoon to combine. Once the flour is mostly combined add the caramel and toffee bits, stir until evenly combined. There will be enough dough for three full cookie sheets of 8 cookies
- Optional, but highly recommended: cover dough with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 1-2 hours or as long as overnight. Your cookies will be good if you don't, but they will be great if you do!
- On a parchment paper or silicone lined cookie sheet, using a medium cookie scoop or rounded tablespoon portions of the cookie dough spaced approximately 2 inches apart. Repeat on a second and third cookie sheet if you're baking all batches at once.
- Optional: for a more uniform cookie, roll each dough ball between your hands until smooth, place back on cookie sheet and lightly press down on the top to make a thick disc of dough.
- Bake for 10-12 minutes or until the cookies are golden brown. Remove from the oven, sprinkle with flakey sea salt.
- Allow to cool on the pan for 5 -10 minutes before moving to a cooling rack to cool completely.
Nutrition
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