The Twelve Days of Christmas Cookies: Chocolate Chip Bites with Salted Caramel Glaze

Today's recipe comes courtesy of All Habs team member, Dayes (@cokeaddict)!

by Dayes, HabsTweetup.com (AllHabs.net)

TORONTO, ON -- What is Christmas without cookies? Nothing. Without cookies, there *is* no holiday! Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating just a smidge, but cookies are a must-have in my holiday book, so here is a popular favourite that I bake for my friends and family.

Chocolate Chip Bites – with salted caramel glaze

The recipe for the glaze makes more than you will need for the cookies. It’s something that I learned to make when I was going to school in Nice and eating it always makes me happy. The recipe for the glaze makes about 1½ cups of salted caramel sauce which you can put on ice cream or cake (or anything, really). Also, the glaze is optional. It just makes the chocolate chip cookies a bit fancy – a nice touch for the holidays. But the cookies are just as good without it.

Cookie:

2¼ cups of flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
½ cup white granulated sugar
¾ cup brown sugar (you can use any kind, but I like the darker stuff)
½ lb butter, softened (I leave it out on the kitchen counter over night – that’s usually soft enough)
1 tsp vanilla
2 large eggs
1 package of semi-sweet mini chocolate chips (you can use the Christmas colour coated ones if you want)

Preheat oven to 375F.

Sift the flour, baking soda and salt together. Set aside.

Using a stand mixer, beat the two sugars together. Add butter, 1 tablespoon at a time and beat until smooth. Add vanilla. Add eggs, one at a time. You may need to scrape down the sides of the bowl. Continue beating until mixture looks light and creamy – not curdled.

Add flour mixture ½ cup at a time – and mix until just combined. Add chocolate chips.

Pour dough onto plastic wrap and freeze for 30 minutes or until firm – but not frozen solid. (If you’re tight on time, you can skip this step. It just makes the dough a little easier to handle.) Cut the dough into ½-inch cubes and drop into a mini-cupcake pan.

Bake for 7 minutes or until golden. Cool on a wire rack.

When completely cooled, brush the salted caramel glaze over the bottom of each cookie and let dry. Package or serve when the glaze has set.

Using the mini-cupcake pan, this yields ~13 dozen cookies.

If you’re making regular-sized cookies, use a teaspoon to drop the dough onto a cookie sheet and leave a fair amount of space between them as they will spread. Bake them for 9-10 minutes. This will yield ~40 cookies.

Glaze (Makes about 1½ cups):
1 cup white granulated sugar
3 ounces (6 tbsp) salted butter (don’t cheap out – crappy butter makes crappy caramel)
½ cup + 2 tbsp heavy cream, at room temperature

Melt the sugar over medium to moderately high heat in 2- or 3-quart pot. Whisk or stir the sugar as it melts and cook it until it is a nice, dark copper color.

Add butter all at once and stir it in. Pour in the heavy cream then remove from heat. The sauce will foam up quite a bit, so be careful. Whisk it until smooth.

This can be stored in the fridge for up to two weeks.

Be sure to check back tomorrow for our next recipe: Apple Cider Snickerdoodles!

Did you miss one of our previous cookie recipes? Find them here:
Day 1 - Raspberry Ribbons
Day 2 - Almond Kisses
Day 3 - Banana Bread Cookies
Day 4 - Melomakarona
Day 5 - The Original Chocolate Chip Cookie

photo credits: Dayes