November's Cookie of the Month: Chocolate Caramel Pockets

Long time no cookie. If you want a quick crowd pleaser that you'll be serving straight from the oven, this is the cookie for you.

I could not for the life of me find plain chewy caramel cube candies. I distinctly remember them as about the same size as a bullion cube and individually wrapped in clear cellophane. Eventually I settled on Dove Caramel Silky Smooth Milk Chocolate Promises which are chocolate candies with a center of liquid caramel at room temperature. Not ideal, but still yummy. I can totally see how the straight up caramel would make these a much better cookie. That's why I left the instructions for the caramel cubes instead of what I used. But like the authors' suggest in the More Choices section at the end of the recipe, you could use this chocolate cookie dough to wrap up pretty much anything, like all those yummy chocolate covered whatnots Trader Joe's stocks.

I used too much dough on my early cookies, so I ran short of the 36 cookie yield. Towards the end I was using well less than the one tablespoon of dough per cookie recommended in the recipe and all but the thinnest two held their caramel contents well. I would go with the littlest amount of dough per cookie in the future.

Chocolate Caramel Pockets adapted from The Ultimate Chocolate Cookie Book: From Chocolate Melties to Whoopie Pies, Chocolate Biscotti to Black and Whites, with Dozens of Chocolate Chip Cookies and Hundreds More by Bruce Weinstein and Mark Scarbrough

Ingredients

• 36 chewy caramel cube candies
  
• 2 1/4 C all-purpose flour
  
• 1/2 C cocoa powder
  
• 1/2 t baking powder
  
• 1/4 t salt
  
• 1/2 lb. (2 sticks) unsalted butter, cool, cut into small pieces
  
• 1/2 C granulated sugar
  
• 1/2 C packed brown sugar
  
• 1 large egg, room temperature
  
• 1 large egg yolk, room temperature
  
• 2 t vanilla extract
  

Procedure

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cut the caramels in half; set them aside. Sift the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt into a medium bowl.

2. Soften the butter in a large bowl, using an electric mixer at medium speed, about 1 minute. Add both kinds of sugar and continue beating until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 1 minute. Beat in the egg and egg yolk, then the vanilla, until smooth, about 30 seconds. Stop the mixer, pour in the prepared flour mixture, then beat at low speed just until a soft, pliable dough forms.

3. Scoop up one tablespoon of the dough, set it in your palm, and flatten it slightly into a squat puffy disc; set two caramel halves side by side in the middle of the disk. Wrap the sides of the disk over the caramels, taking care not to smoosh them together. Then continue pushing the cookie together until you can seal it into a squat ball, like a deflated basketball. Place this onto a large baking sheet lined with a silicone mat, spacing about 1 inch apart.

4. Bake for 12 minutes, until the dough is set but still slightly springy to the touch. Cool on the baking sheets for 2 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to cool completely. Cool the baking sheets for 5 minutes before baking further batches.

Previous Cookies of the Month:
January's Cookie of the Month: Soft Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies
February's Cookie of the Month: Chocolate Cream Sandwich Cookies
March's Cookie of the Month: Classic Chocolate Chip Cookies
April's Cookie of the Month: Banana Chocolate Chip Cookies
May's Cookie of the Month: Butterscotch Chocolate Chip Cookies
June's Cookie of the Month: Honey Chocolate Chip Cookies
July's Cookie of the Month: Big Soft Chocolate Cookies
August's Cookie of the Month: Viennese Chocolate Pepper Cookies
September's Cookie of the Month: Potato Chip Chocolate Chip Cookies
October's Cookie of the Month: Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

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