salted caramel chocolate chip cookie
Dessert

Legendary Chewy Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe

Hi everyone! This is Sierra, and today I have a legendary salted caramel chocolate chip cookie recipe for you!

To get this recipe perfect, I spent weeks testing various recipes and researching how different ingredients would affect the taste, texture, and appearance of the cookie. My goal was to create a chocolate chip cookie with a more developed flavor profile than the ones that you can buy in your local grocery store, and I wanted it to be incredibly chewy, not too flat, and have crispy edges. The hundreds of cookies I baked paid off and resulted in this amazing cookie that is as good as I could’ve dreamed.

To put it eloquently, let me quote Kevin (referencing HIMYM referencing Amadeus):

Each bite starts with a hint of crispness, followed immediately by the warm embrace of the soft, chewy center. You’re caught in a dance of cookie dough and glorious pockets of gooey, melted chocolate. The nutty and sweet flavors mingling in a seductive pas-de-deux. That’s when you notice, a trace of caramel…the most playful little taste. These textures pulling apart and coming back together in a fugue of sweet and nutty…so delightful. This is no mere chocolate chip cookie, made with flour and chocolate chips…this is God, speaking to us through food.

Kevin
salted caramel chocolate chip cookie

How I Met This Cookie

This recipe was inspired by the Sumbitch cookies from How I Met Your Mother! In the TV show, Sumbitches are peanut butter, caramel, and chocolate chip cookies that the mother gives Lily the first time they meet. For this salted caramel chocolate chip cookie recipe, I omitted peanut butter because some of us are allergic to nuts.

Kevin and I binged this show because it’s one of Kevin’s all-time favorite TV shows, and it quickly became my favorite show as well. Since this is a recipe blog, not a TV show blog, I won’t go into it more, but I’ll just say that I would highly recommend checking it out if you’ve never watched it!

salted caramel chocolate chip cookie

Tell Me About Your Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies

We all have our own favorite version of chocolate chip cookies—soft, thin, crisp, chewy, melty, runny, and the list goes on. As I mentioned above, my dream cookie is one that has a richer flavor than your typical chocolate chip cookie, with crispy edges and a chewy center.

To achieve the more complex flavors I wanted in my cookie, I used browned butter and salted caramel. Just adding these two ingredients enhances the flavor profile and brings the taste to a whole new level. However, if you want a more traditional chocolate chip cookie, feel free to skip the caramel and browning the butter—you’ll still end up with an amazing cookie!

salted caramel chocolate chip cookie

Lessons I Learned Along the Way

Cookies can be one of the easiest things to bake, being that they are some people’s first foray into baking. However, to achieve my dream salted caramel chocolate chip cookie, I had to do some research and add some extra steps into the process.

If you do dig into each ingredient in a cookie recipe, you will be amazed at how many different kinds of cookies you can end up with. I made cookies at least once a day for 2 weeks to come up with this recipe, and rarely did two trials produce identical cookies…until I got this recipe down.

Here are some helpful tips that I learned:

  • Use browned butter. This will create a deep, caramel-nutty flavor that is so much richer than what you can get with room-temperature/melted butter.
  • Use dark brown sugar and white sugar. Dark brown sugar creates a chewy texture and more caramelized taste, but using too little white sugar will make the cookie not expand, meaning you will have a tall cookie with cakey texture.
  • Don’t overlook whisking egg and sugar! Make sure to whisk until the mixture has tripled in volume and is pale yellow. When you lift your whisk up with the mixture on it, it should fall down in ribbons. The resulting ribbons should remain visible on the surface for a second before re-integrating.
  • Use baking soda rather than baking powder for denser, chewier cookies. Baking soda creates a chewy texture while baking powder makes it cakeier.
  • Use chocolate chunks (or cut up chocolate bars) along with chocolate chips. This will create a variety of chocolate flavor and texture. I like using relatively large chunks so that you end up with larger pockets of melted chocolatey goodness. I used semi-sweet chocolate chips and a 70% dark chocolate bar. Using 60% chocolate bar also works!
  • The salted caramel sauce brings the cookie to a whole new level. For the purpose of making these cookies, I wanted to caramel to be solid after freezing them so they would melt slower in the oven. To do this, I let the caramel cook a bit longer on the stove before removing it. Alternatively, you can add 50% more butter than stated in the recipe, which should also help your caramel become solidified.
  • Put the caramel sauce on top of the cookie instead of inside if you want a more structured cookie. I tried putting the caramel on the inside of the cookie thinking it would create a gooey center, but while it was gooey, it also collapsed the entire cookie, making it too flat for my liking.

Feel free to experiment on your own with the ingredients to create your own unique cookie if you’re feeling adventurous! Nothing is more exciting than playing around with a recipe and making it your own!

Let’s get started on these scrumptious salted caramel chocolate chip cookies!

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Legendary Chewy Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie

4 from 4 votes
Recipe by Sierra Park Course: DessertCuisine: AmericanDifficulty: Intermediate
Servings

10

cookies
Prep time

30

minutes
Cooking time

12

minutes
Refrigeration time

3

hours

These mouthwatering salted caramel chocolate chip cookies are hands down the best cookies we’ve ever eaten. Crispy on the outside, chewy and melty on the inside, with a complex flavor profile creating a nutty, sweet, and slightly salty experience, these cookies are unlike any other.

Ingredients

  • 10 tablespoons butter

  • 7 tablespoons granulated sugar (94g)

  • 1 egg

  • 6 1/2 tablespoons dark brown sugar (83g)

  • 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract

  • 18 tablespoons all-purpose flour (177g)

  • 1/2 teaspoons salt

  • 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

  • 8 tablespoons dark chocolate bar (60-70%; 45 grams)

  • 8 tablespoons semi-sweet chocolate chips (90 grams)

  • 3 tablespoons salted caramel sauce (learn to make it here)

  • Equipment
  • Small pot

  • Rubber spatula

  • Mixing bowls

  • Whisk or hand mixer

  • Baking sheet

  • Cookie scoop

Directions

  • Brown Butter
  • Cut the butter into small pieces of 1/2-1 inch cubes and add into a small empty potsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie butter
  • Heat the pot over medium. Mix together with a silicon or wooden spatula. Pay close attention when the butter starts to boil as the butter will brown very soon afterward. Keep stirring and mixing everything together to make sure nothing at the bottom gets burntsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie butter in pot
  • Remove the pot from the stove when the butter has browned and there are small brown particles at the bottom. You should smell a strong scent but not burnt. Pour this in a bowl/container quickly and let it cool completely to room temperature or a little colder. To quicken this process, store it in the fridge for 10-15 minutes. Do not store any longer than 20 minutes as the butter will harden in the fridgesalted caramel chocolate chip cookie browned buttersalted caramel chocolate chip cookie browned butter cooled
  • Cookie Dough
  • As the butter is cooling, crack an egg in a mixing bowl. Whisk a few times to break the egg yolk and add granulated sugar. With a whisk or a hand mixer, mix the two completely until the mixture is light, pale yellow and has thickened. This may take up to 20 minutes of hand whisking. The mixture should fall in ribbons when you lift some of it up with your whisksalted caramel chocolate chip cookie egg yolks and sugarsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie yolks and sugar mixed
  • Add in the cooled browned butter and whisk completely. Add the dark brown sugar and vanilla extract and whisk until just mixed and the mixture has become uniformsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie mixing browned buttersalted caramel chocolate chip cookie brown sugarsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie brown sugar and butter mixed
  • Sift all-purpose flour, salt, and baking soda into the mixture and gently fold together using a rubber spatula until the mixture just comes together into a dough. Do not over mix!salted caramel chocolate chip cookie floursalted caramel chocolate chip cookie flour mixed
  • Cut the dark chocolate bar into small-medium pieces. Add to the mixture along with chocolate chips. Gently fold in everything together until the chocolate has spread evenly in the doughsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie chocolate chunkssalted caramel chocolate chip cookie chocolate mixed
  • Cover the mixing bowl and store in the fridge for at least 3-4 hours, or preferably overnight
  • Bake
  • Take out the bowl of cookie dough from the fridge 15-20 minutes before baking and let it thaw to make scooping easier
  • Preheat the oven to 375ÂşF and line the baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone mat. A silicone mat is preferred when baking with caramel sauce. Parchment paper will cause the caramel that drips off the side of the cookie to burn
  • Scoop the cookie dough with a cookie scoop (we use size 20 scoop). A helpful tip is to make sure you have a chunk of chocolate on the top of the mound of dough. This will create a large pocket of melted chocolate on the surface of your cookie
  • Add 1/4 teaspoon of salted caramel sauce on top of the cookie dough. Don’t put too much as it will flow down the sides and burnsalted caramel chocolate chip cookie scooped
  • Bake in oven for about 12-15 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the cookie dough in the center is no longer runny, but it should still be soft. Remove from the oven and let cool a bit. Enjoy while they’re still warm!

Notes

  • After the cookies have cooled, store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days

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These mouthwatering salted caramel chocolate chip cookies are hands down the best cookies we've ever eaten. Crispy on the outside, chewy and melty on the inside, with a complex flavor profile creating a nutty, sweet, and slightly salty experience, these cookies are unlike any other.

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2 Comments

  1. Woww these look amazing! Chocolate chip cookies are my fave dessert, so I will have to try these!

  2. Oh my gosh. These cookies are just about all of my favorite tastes rolled into one. Will definitely being trying this recipe!!!

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