Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars with Peanut Butter Caramel Filling

Difficult: No
Time Consuming: No

This is one of my favorite desserts to bring to events because... 1) They come together quickly.  2) The filling makes them incredible soft.  3) The caramel adds a sweetness that's tempered by the peanut butter, so it's not too sweet.  4) I can't stop eating them.

These bars are amazing.  Possibly one of my favorite things I've made this year, they're that good.  The cookie layers perfectly sandwich the peanut butter caramel middle.  To make it extra special, as I was cooking the caramel for the filling, I dropped in a vanilla bean and stirred until all the little flecks of vanilla caviar speckled the gooey filling (just make sure you take it out before you spread it over the cookie base).

This recipe makes a 13x9" pan of incredible bars.  When you're spreading the first layer of cookie into the pan, you will worry that there is no way that two-thirds of the dough will cover it.  But just keep squishing it around until you get the whole bottom covered - it will seem thin, but the layer will puff up when it bakes.  For the cookie topping, I dropped teaspoon sized dough balls all over the surface, they puff up and spread out, but still leave little windows for the silky, gooey peanut butter caramel to peak through.

The Recipe:

yields one 9x13 pan, cut into whatever size you'd like

Ingredients
 chocolate chip cookie dough
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt 
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
5 tablespoons shortening (if you have a tablespoon sized cookie scoop, it makes quick measuring from a tub of shortening)
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 egg
2 cups semi sweet chocolate chips 

Peanut Butter Caramel Filling
1/2 cup (4 oz) evaporated milk
11 ounces caramels, unwrapped (you can buy Kraft Caramels, Kraft Caramel Bits, or Werther's Original Chewy Caramels - I used Werther's because someone bought out all the Kraft caramels)
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
*optional: the caviar from 1 vanilla bean, or 1 whole split vanilla bean

1/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

Optional: Coarse salt, like Kosher or Sea Salt.  You can be extra special by using vanilla sea salt if you have it.

Directions

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Line a 9x13" pan with foil - leave enough overhang so you can lift the bars out of the pan when they're done.  Set aside.  In a medium bowl, lightly whisk flour, baking soda, and salt together, set aside.

2.  In the bowl of a stand mixer, beat butter and shortening together until combined.  Add both sugars and beat for about 2 minutes - until light and fluffy.  Add egg and vanilla, beat until combined.  Mix in chocolate chips.

3.  Add half of the flour mixture, and mix until just combined.  Then add the remaining flour mixture and mix again until just combined.

4.  Take about two-thirds of the dough and press it into the bottom of the pan.  It will seem like it won't cover, but just keep smooshing it until it covers - it will be fairly thin.  Bake for 8-10 minutes, until it's just set and hardly brown.

5.  While the base layer is baking, begin making the filling.  Unwrap caramels and place in a medium saucepan.  Add peanut butter, evaporated milk (and the vanilla bean if you are using it).  Whisk over medium heat until smooth.

6.  When the cookie base is finished (which probably happened while you were making the filling), pour the peanut butter caramel over top, and spread evenly (if you put in a whole split vanilla bean, make sure to remove it.)  Sprinkle 1/4 cup of chocolate chips (or more, I'm not judging) over the peanut butter caramel.

7.  Drop teaspoon sized dough balls over the surface of the caramel layer.  Sprinkle lightly with salt (optional) and bake for 18-20 minutes (until the cookie dough on top is lightly browned)

8.  Cool completely in pan then cut into 24 squares (or however many you want).  I chilled mine in the fridge to make cutting a little easier.


From Everyday Reading

Soft Lemon Sugar cookies with Raspberry Icing

Difficulty. Easy
Time consuming: about 10-15 minutes to make the dough, then an overnight chill in the fridge, then rolling out the dough and baking batches for 8 minutes at a time.

I made some sweet treats for the sweet teachers at my school this Valentine's Day. With the overload of chocolate around every corner on this holiday, I opted for a fruitier treat that was very well received.  

The cookies are soft and bursting with bright lemon flavor.  The citrus note in the cookie complimented the raspberry frosting which resulted in the perfect sweet and tart flavor combination that was out of this world!

Happy (belated) Valentines Day, everyone! What kind of sweet treats did you get to enjoy?

 The Recipe:

 yields: 18 medium heart-shaped cookies and 28 small heart-shaped cookies

Ingredients
Cookies
2 cups flour
1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder (or 2 teaspoons if you want an even fluffier cookie)
1/2 teaspoon salt
2/3 cup butter (10 and 2/3 tablespoons), room temperature
2/3 cup white sugar
2 eggs, room temperature
zest from 1 lemon
juice from one lemon (about 1/4 cup of lemon juice)

Frosting
1/3 cup butter (5 1/3 tablespoons)
 3 cups powdered sugar
2 tablespoons Raspberry Melba Sauce (more to taste, I probably used closer to 1/4 cup)
2 tablespoons milk (optional - if you need to thin the frosting, but the raspberry sauce will do this, too)

Directions

Cookies 
1.  In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, and salt.  Set aside.

2. Cream butter in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Add sugar and beat until well combined.  Add eggs and lemon zest and mix until well combined.

3.  Add half of the flour mixture and mix until combined.  Add lemon juice, mix.  Add the remaining of the flour mixture and mix until well incorporated.

4.  Turn dough out onto plastic wrap, smush into a disk shape, and refrigerate for several hours or overnight.

5.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Take half of the dough out and let sit at room temperature for a few minutes - just enough so that it can be rolled out without breaking or cracking too much.  Roll dough out to 1/4" thick on a well floured surface (I used a combination of flour and powdered sugar), cut into desired shapes, transfer to a baking sheet.

6.  Bake for 8 minutes.  The cookies will not spread a lot in baking, so maybe leave a 1/2" between cookies.  Cool for a few minutes on the baking sheet then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.  The tops of the cookies will be lightly colored and the bottoms just barley mottled with a light brown.

7.  Repeat step 6 with the remaining dough.

Frosting
1.  Cream the butter in a stand mixer until light and fluffy.  Add the powdered sugar 1 cup at a time.  It will seem impossibly thick and clumpy - if this happens, either add a tablespoon of milk or a few squirts of Raspberry Melba sauce until it starts to just barely come together.  Once all the sugar has been added, add raspberry sauce and beat on high until fluffy.  If the mixture seems too thick after all the raspberry has been added, add milk 1 tablespoon at a time until the desired consistency has been reached.

2.  Using an offset spatula or knife, spread onto cookies.  Let cookies sit for a few hours until the frosting is set.  If you are going to add sprinkles, do it sooner than later, because when the frosting starts to dry, the sprinkles won't stick as well.

Of course, if after you've frosted all of your cookies and find that you have some frosting left, sandwich with vanilla wafers or some homemade chocolate wafer cookies.

And I need to thank my friend Katie from grad school who shared the base of this recipe with me :)
Katie is awesome, she was doing her clinical rotation at a nursing home and wanted to share a treat with the residents that they would not have trouble eating - a lot of the people there were on restricted diets (like mechanical soft foods only) and she wanted to share something soft that the majority of folks could eat.  Of course, I helped her eat the leftovers, because that's what good friends do.

Hot Chocolate Cookies

Difficult: No way, Jose.
Time consuming: Nah.  About 10 minutes to mix up the cookie dough, and 10 minutes per sheet pan to bake.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Here's a recipe that made it to my cookie trays this year, enjoy!!

These cookies are incredible.  They taste just like hot cocoa and even have the little mini 'mallows in them (they don't get baked out!).  The cookies have a soft and chewy texture and is loaded with awesome cocoa flavor.  They have made it into my limited selection of cookies to make every Christmas, and probably more often than that.  My husband does not love sweets the way I do but he's already requested a second batch of these cookies, so that's how I know they're good.

The recipe makes a lot, about 5 dozen or so cookies.  Which makes it great for a cookie exchange party (where I took them last week) or for an office party, or for anyone who really, really, loves hot chocolate.  The recipe halves nicely, too, in case you don't need that many cookies.

FYI: this recipe calls for Kraft "'Mallow Bits" which I found at Krogers near the hot chocolate and coffee.  If you can't find mallow bits, I'm sure regular ol' mini marshmallows will be equally as tasty.  Rumor has it that Target also carries Mallow Bits.

Yields: About 60 cookies

Ingredient:
 2 sticks (1 cup) butter, room temperature
1 cup of sugar
2/3 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla
3 1/4 cup flour
4 packs of hot chocolate mix (not sugar free) (around 1/4 cup cocoa mix, if you have a canister rather than packets)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups chocolate chips (milk or semisweet) (about 1 full 12-oz bag)
1 cup (half of the container) 'Mallow Bits

Directions:

1.  Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.

2.  In a medium bowl, whisk to combine the flour, hot cocoa mix, salt, and baking soda.  Set aside.

3.  In the bowl of a stand mixer (with paddle attachment), cream the butter and the sugars until light.

4.  Add eggs and vanilla to the butter/sugar mixture.  Mix to combine.

5.  Add the flour to the bowl of the stand mixer and mix until it seems evenly incorporated (I did mine about a cup or so at a time), (the dough will seem really thick).

6.  Add the chocolate chips and 'Mallow Bits.  Mix until evenly distributed.  My KitchenAid was clunking around but it managed, and yours will, too.

7.  Drop tablespoon fulls of dough (I used my dough scooper) onto the parchment and bake for 10 minutes.

**While the first batch was baking, I scooped the rest of my dough onto a wax paper lined cookie sheet and popped it into the fridge.  I don't know if you need to do this, but it does help the cookies from spreading too much during baking.

8.  The cookies may look underdone, but if you want a soft and chewy cookie, take them out now, let cool on the sheet pan for a few minutes, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.

Slightly adapted from Baked Bree.

A Softer Cut Out Sugar Cookie

Difficult: Not really
Time consuming: less so than other cut out cookies because the dough does not need to chill.

I have a go to sugar cookie recipe.  It's awesome.  The cookies cut out and bake up beautifully.  But they are a hard cookie.  And husband does not like hard cookies.  He likes soft cookies, so this holiday season I scoured the internet for a softer cut out sugar cookie.

I found a great recipe but it called for a lot of baking powder.  Baking powder = spreading cookies.  You might get something that looks like this:

Picture from Pinterest.  Source.

I tweaked the recipe and am very pleased with it.  The cookie is not as hard as the ones of Christmas' past, but is hard enough to hold its shape while baking and take royal icing like a champ.  Don't be confused, this won't make a bakery style cake cookie.  But you will get a great softer cut out sugar cookie that can be used for all cut-out cookie occasions.  I think the secret to this cookie being a softer cut-out is that it uses powdered sugar instead of white sugar.  Just a guess, though.

The Recipe:

Ingredients:
2 sticks (1 cup) of unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1 egg
2-3 teaspoons extract (I used homemade vanilla)
2 1/2 - 2 3/4 cup all purpose flour
1/4 teaspoon baking powder (you can reduce this or leave it out if your cookies have more complicated shapes)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.  Line a baking sheet or two with parchment paper and set aside.  Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a medium bowl, set aside.

2.  Cream the butter and the sugar together until just combined (over beating will incorporate more air which will cause cookies to spread more when baking).

3.  In a small bowl, whisk together the egg and flavoring (mixing the egg now will ensure you don't over beat later).  Add to the butter/sugar and mix until just combined.

4.  Add the flour mixture to the butter/egg/etc in increments.  Stirring in between until the flour is moistened.  (Again we are trying to avoid over-beating the dough).  Once all the flour has been added, let the dough rest for a few minutes (I use this time to do a few dishes).

5.  Place a sheet of parchment out on your table, plop the dough onto it, flour the top, and roll the dough out to about 1/4" thick.  Cut out shapes and transfer to prepared baking pan.

6.  Bake for 6-8 minutes, until the bottoms just start to turn golden (the tops should not brown at all).

7.  Let cool for a few minutes on the pan, then transfer to a cooling rack.

8.  After the cookies have cooled, decorate however you wish.


I usually wait a day or so to decorate.  And I like to use royal icing, which I will post about very soon.

These cookies also freeze very well as long as they're stored in a airtight container.  I baked my cookies one weekend, then froze them for a week before I pulled them out to ice them.

Recipe adapted from The Adventures of Sweet Sugar Belle.