Salted Caramel Cookies

I'm notorious for being a candy fiend, a lover of all sweets (and sours!). But the top of the list? Definitely rich, chewy, buttery caramel. I looooove caramel. It's the essence of candy to me, simple and sugary and just delicious. Its flavours can be complex without a lot of effort. If you want to win me over, that's where my heart is: a good caramel.

I've noticed that caramel has been getting a bit trendy lately, and to my delight, one of the best caramels at that. I remember when I used to have to hunt for salted caramels, usually depending on Whole Foods for an expensive import from across the country, or settling for a less-rare-but-still-challenging-to-find salted dark chocolate bar and a side of chewy caramels. Now, though, there seems to be availability of this kind of caramel. I saw them at my local grocery store the other day, and I know when I've been to the airport a few times in the last month I've seen them in all the stores. I'm in caramel heaven!

Salted caramels. There's just something about them that hit the spot. The dark, rich chocolate pairs well with the sticky-sweet of the caramel, and then the salt that makes the mouth water… It's a wonderfully balanced composition of flavours, the salt making the sweet even sweeter, the chocolate enhancing the tang of the salt flakes. Yum.

So to honour the rise of the salted caramel, I had to make a cookie.




Salted Caramel Cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 egg, room temperature
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

14 oz. dark chocolate chips
sea salt flakes

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
   
2. Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl.
   
3. Cream the butter and brown sugar. Add egg, condensed milk, and vanilla. Beat well.
   
4. Gradually add the dry ingredients.
   
5. Drop large teaspoons onto a non-stick baking sheet. It's a loose batter, and a bit messy, so don't expect perfect shapes here; the cookies'll spread to a pretty circular shape on their own.
   
6. Bake for 8.5 minutes. Edges will just be turning brown.
   
7. Let cookies cool completely. They cannot be even remotely warm for the next step to work correctly.
   
8. To make the topping of these cookies, melt a half-bag of high quality dark chocolate chips (or even a couple dark chocolate bars -- I'm talking 72% cocoa or higher here) in a microwave safe bowl. Try 1 minute, stir. If it still needs more heat to melt, add 20 seconds, stir again. Keep adding 20-second increments until the chocolate is still thick but melted. Be careful, chocolate burns pretty easy and its burning smell is really similar to popcorn -- it's hard to get out of the house for a while.
   
9. Drizzle the chocolate over each cookie so that a majority of the top is covered with cookie still seen on the sides.
   
10. Top with a pinch of sea salt flakes.
    
11. Allow chocolate to reharden, which will take at least a couple hours. Once solid, store. Yields approximately 3 dozen.

Enjoy!

Spicy Chai Cookies

A sugar cookie that tastes just like a mug full of warm spiced chai tea. Cardamon, ginger, black pepper, and other spices combine to make this comfort-cookie.

I feel it is only fitting that the first recipe I share in here be one of my favourites, Spicy Chai Cookies. I first came across the original recipe at Evie's Kitchen. Over the many, many times I've made this recipe I've tried changing it up a few ways. I've made some adjustments to the amount of tea and have found that the grade of sugar and warmth of the butter can even change the texture of these cookies. No matter how I make them, though, they make my mother talk about the cardamom cookies my grandmother used to make, a personal recipe she took to her grave, but with a little bite.

I took these cookies to Neil Gaiman himself this past autumn. It was Hallowe'en, a reading and signing event for the UK release of The Graveyard Book, and a couple friends and I stood in line for hours to get him to sign a couple things and present a box of freshly baked gluten-free/wheat-free version of these cookies to him. I was dressed as a babycake (a lumpy brown cake with baby doll parts sticking out here and there, wrapped in cling film and adorned with a price tag) as he tasted the cookies and approved, 'mmm'ing at the cookies and calling my costume 'perfectly disturbing.' This recipe ties a lot of what I want to do here together. It's where I came up with the idea of this blog.



These cookies are beautiful at this time of year, especially as dunkers. They're like a warm cup of spiced chai tea and filled with typically wintery flavours. They're good to give as a gift because they're a social cookie -- it's like inviting the giftee to a cuppa', they're light and spicy and usually bring a smile as people realize what it tastes like.

Spicy Chai Cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp cardamom
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp fresh ground black pepper
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tea bags of black tea (English Breakfast or Irish, use DECAF if there's an option; cut open tea bags and grind leaves into a fine powder in a coffee grinder)

1 cup superfine/bakers' sugar + 1/2 c raw sugar (bigger granules) to coat outside of cookies
1 egg
1 cup of unsalted butter, softened
2 tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
   
2. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking powder, spices, and ground tea leaves.
   In an electric mixer, beat together sugar and butter. Add egg and vanilla. Beat until well incorporated.
   
3. Gradually add dry ingredients.
   
4. You will probably need to stick the dough (in bowl) into the freezer for about 15 minutes. It is extremely soft and hard to roll. This will firm it up. I usually stick the dough back into freezer between each batch.
   
5. Scoop dough balls out with a tablespoon. Lightly coating your hands with a quick squirt of cooking spray/vegetable oil mist will keep this tacky dough from sticking to you. Roll each one in the 1/2 cup of reserved raw sugar to coat and place on baking sheet. Work fast, this dough sticks to yours hands as it warms -- touch the pre-sugar-coated ball as little as possible.
   
6. Press each ball flat with the bottom of a drinking glass or measuring cup coated with cooking spray.
   
7. [Note: I live at sea level] Bake for 8 mins 30 secs for soft cookies. Bake 10 minutes for crispy dunkers (the edges will be light brown). Yields approximately 2.5 dozen.

Enjoy, and of course play with this and pass it around! I swear only good things can come of this recipe!

Tasty Babycakes

The first cookies were created by accident. Cooks used a small amount of cake batter to test their oven temperature before baking a large cake. These little test cakes were called 'koekje', meaning "little cake" in Dutch.

Cookies are little cakes. Baby cakes. Babycakes.

Neil Gaiman's chilling story of that very title was what got me hooked to his writing (MP3 | text | comic). I love his writing.

I also love baking.

The fusion of these two loves come into play here on this blog as I attempt to make cookies inspired by his stories, characters, settings, and words.

I'll throw in other cookie recipes, too, and tales of the cooking failures that spring up in these baking adventures (because let's face it -- who really bakes without blundering a few times?) just to keep it interesting.

But first and foremost, this is a place for babycakes.