Sweet and Salty Cookies

Carmel Sea Salt & Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been rather keyed into sea salt carmel lately. I can't remember when the cravings for it began, but I'll blame Starbucks for lack of people to blame. Anyways, I found these nifty carmel bits at Jumbo Foods (local grocer) awhile  back and was like, "Dude, these could be used for cookies."

So, of course I bought them.

And they sat in my cabinet for over a month. How do I know it was more than a month? Well, my daughter is four weeks old and I bought them before she was born. Thus, I've had them for over a month.

So, since I feel like a normal person (kind of) once more, I thought I'd bake some cookies. Whilst my parental units were in town for two weeks, I made cookies, but I didn't use the carmel bits. Since I'm venturing out to be social with people my own age on Friday (and giving Basil Bea a much needed dog play date), I figured I'd try my all time fav cookie recipe and throw the carmel bits in instead of the dark chocolate chips.

Now, for YEARS I've tried every single chocolate chip cookie recipe I've run across. And they all pretty much taste the same to me and usually are kind of a let down after they are no longer fresh from the oven. Well, after we moved into the house and I had a kitchen once more (well, mostly I had all my baking stuff back, as I had a kitchen whilst living in San Antonio, but I digress...), I pulled out the newest recipe I wished to try: Brown Butter & Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I was a little leery of the recipe for two reasons: brown butter and the whole two hours in the fridge.

I mean, what the heck is brown butter?

It's melted butter that's brown and kind of nutty. Does it make a difference in recipes?

Yeah. Trust me.

I think the first time I made them I threw them in the fridge for two hours like the recipe called for, but I didn't really brown the butter properly, but they were still good. (I did not successfully brown butter till I made those doughnuts.) Out of the two recipes I tried out that week, Pilot Boy like the Brown Butter and Sea Salt cookies best.

One would think because we both liked them, this recipe would be my to go. Nope. Why?

The whole putting it in the fridge and brown butter. (Also, it calls for a tablespoon of greek yogurt, which I don't usually have on hand since I made myself sick of it by eating it for a year straight for a meal during my Greek Yogurt Diet phase.)

HOWEVER, in looking for a recipe to make cookies with my carmel bits, I decided to go with this one since it called for sea salt.

And let me tell you, THEY ROCK.


So, here's my adapted recipe if you care:


Carmel and Chocolate Sea Salt Cookies (With Brown Butter and Greek Yogurt)
adapted from Brown Butter & Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies by Monique of AmbitiousKitchen.com

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt, plus more for sprinkling later
• 2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter (Seriously, use butter and not the fake stuff. Usually, I'm all about the Blue Bonnet, but this one calls for you to brown the butter and the fake stuff doesn't brown the same. Mostly due to the fact it's not actually butter.)
• 1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar (or whatever brown sugar you have. I don't honestly know which one I have on hand. If you want dark and only have light, you can make your own brown sugar. See here. I've made my own brown sugar from this recipe and it totally works.) 
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 large egg plus 1 egg yoke
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract (Or 2 teaspoons plus the overflow, as I always put more than what's called for in...)
• 1 tablespoon of plain greek yogurt
• 3/4 cup (plus overflow) semi-sweet chocolate chips (or whatever ones you want to use)
• 3/4 cup of carmel bits (or you can buy the hunks and chops it up if you want.)

What to do with all that stuff: 

Dough Balls with the sprinkled Sea Salt

1. Throw the sticks of butter into a pot. Not a pan, but a sauce pan. A small one. Not a huge one. Put it on medium heat and walk away for the moment.
2. Put the flour, baking soda, and sea salt into a smaller bowl and whisk together. Or mix it together. Just make sure it get combined in some form. 
3. Go check on your melting butter. If it's not foaming, walk off again.
4. Whilst waiting for your butter to foam, mix the two sugars together in a larger bowl, making sure to get all the clumps out of your brown sugar. Beat those clumps out.
5. By now your butter must be foaming, so grab a whisk or something and start whisking it. Make sure you keep up whisking till the butter begins to brown on the bottom. If you can't tell if it's brown or not, just wait till it smells nutty. Trust me, it'll be clear when it's done based on the smell. Once you smell nuts instead of butter, remove from heat, throw it into a heat proof bowl, and set aside for a moment to cool off a wee bit. 
6. Get another small bowl and break one of the eggs and separate the yoke from the white. Dump the egg white and then break the other egg into the bowl. Add your vanilla and the greek yogurt. 
7. In that large bowl with the sugar, add the cooled browned butter and with an electric mixer (or whatever you have on hand) mix together till combined. Make sure it's very combined.
8. Add the rest of the wet stuff (see step six). Beat those into the sugar and butter mixture on a medium setting. 
9. Add the dry ingredients a wee bit at a time. Make sure your mixer is set on the lowest setting during this point. Once the dry ingredients are just combined, stop using the mixer and grab a spatula or wooden spoon. 
10. Once you've got the spoon/spatula/whatever you like to mix by hand with, add the carmel bits and chocolate chips. Fold these into the cookie mixture. 
11. Chill your dough for an hour in the freezer (unless you want to use the fridge and wait two hours or so, but I find the freezer for an hour is the best.) I suggest you remove the dough from the bowl, form a block, ball, or shape of some sort, and wrap it in plastic wrap.
12. Preheat your oven to 350 degrees once you remove the dough from the freezer. 
13. From the shape you formed to chill the dough, break off chunks and form balls. Each chuck should be about a teaspoon or so, but they can be larger. Use your judgement on what size cookie you want. Anyways, after you got your ball, sprinkle it with some sea salt. Once more, use as much or as little as you want. 
14. Put the dough balls onto a cookie sheet. Make sure they're 2 inches or so apart, as they do spread and will bake together if they are too close. 
15. Bake cookies for 9 -11 minutes. (Unless you have a bread stone in your oven that you forgot to remove due to screaming baby, then you might have to bake your cookies for 13 minutes or more, depending on your oven.) 
16. Once the cookies are done, leave them on the tray to cool a bit, then place on a wire wrack to completely cool. (Or not. Sometimes my cookies don't make it to wire wracks before they are eaten.) 

Side note:

I've always had an issue to getting my cookies to spread. I always get mounds. However, I think I discovered the secret to spreading: chilling your dough. I've read all about it, but it seemed such over kill for chocolate chip cookies. (Or most cookies, other than ones you have to roll out.) But, seriously people, chill your dough. It does wonders if you have the Mound Cookie Problem as I do.