The Unreal Meal

September is somehow already close upon us, and with September comes not just the turn of fall leaves and harvesting summer vegetables, but also football season! Football season may mean nothing to a lot of people (and this isn’t a sports blog, so I’ll try not to dwell too much on that), but to many, football games are synonymous with food. In my world, there’s a lot of fantasy football, and with that comes gatherings of good friends for fantasy drafts.

Tonight marks the first draft of my (many) fantasy leagues this year, and since it’s at my humble abode, I chose to bake my favorite cookies to celebrate the occasion.  Once in the past, for one of the boyfriend’s drafts, I baked these cookies in the shape of footballs, and it was highly entertaining to have a friend of ours keep repeating the Ace Ventura quote, ”they’re shaped like little footballs!”  However, they don’t bake nearly as evenly as the standard round cookie shape, and it’s a bit of a pain in the rump to pipe the icing on so that it looks like perfect pigskin laces.  Freeform drizzles are much easier, thus I opted this year for the classic style.

Not shaped like little footballs, in fact.

My very most favorite thing about these cookies is not actually eating them myself, but it’s watching other people eat them.  They’re a bit of a surprise for novice nibblers, as they’re not just plain chocolate cookies with white chocolate drizzles.  They have a chewy caramel center, which I’ve been told is like finding a pot of gooey gold in the center of a chocolate rainbow.  Yeah yeah, it’s a terrible metaphor, but I blame the fact that the cookies are good enough that people are temporarily stupefied after eating them.

Gooey Caramel Center

I’ve been making these for years — I honestly have no idea where I even found the recipe at this point — and since I’ve had so many requests for it, I’m finally sharing this with the world.  The best thing about these cookies is that they’re so incredibly simple, but could so easily be changed to incorporate other stuff and thus a whole new cookie is born.

Chocolate Salted Caramel Cookies

2 1/4 cups All Purpose Flour, unsifted
3/4 cups good quality cocoa powder (I prefer natural, but Dutch processed is fine, too)
2 cups granulated sugar*
2 Tablespoons molasses*
1 cup butter, softened
2 1/2 tsp baking powder (you could use 1 tsp of baking soda instead, but the cookies would be less fluffy)
2 large eggs
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon chocolate extract (optional — not everyone has this, and they’re just fine without it)
48 Rolos candies or other small pieces of caramel
Fine grain sea salt, like Maldon or Fleur de Sel
1 cup white chocolate chips

*Alternately, you could substitute 1 cup white sugar and 1 cup brown sugar, and skip the molasses, but I always tend to be out of brown sugar, and I generally have a jar of molasses for which I have little use.

Preheat the oven to 375° F.

In a mixing bowl, cream together the softened butter, the sugars, and the molasses (I use salted butter and omit putting any salt in the batter).  When the mixture is light and fluffy, add the vanilla extract, chocolate extract (if applicable) and eggs, and mix until lighter and fluffier.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, and cocoa powder.  Whisk it together until it’s fairly uniform.

Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet, about 1/2 cup at a time, making sure to incorporate all of dry stuff before adding more.  Once it’s all mixed in, let the cookie dough rest in the fridge for about twenty minutes, or it will be hard to form.

Once chilled, wrap about a tablespoon of dough around a Rolo and very lightly sprinkle a couple flakes of sea salt on the bottom of the candy before completely enclosing all the gooey center.  Line up on an ungreased cookie sheet, approximately 2″ apart, and bake for 7 – 9 minutes  until they’re set and just starting to crack a little.

Remove from the oven and let cool on a wire rack.  Once the cookies are completely cooled, put the white chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave on 50% power for 2 minutes.  Remove from the microwave, stir until smooth.  If they’re not completely melted, put them back in the microwave for another 30 seconds at 50% power until completely melted.

Pour the melted white chocolate into a zip-top bag, and snip a very small hole in one of the pointy ends so that you can pipe the chocolate, willy nilly, onto the cookies.  Let the chocolate set, then enjoy!

These are fantastic, and really versatile.  I’ve made them with mini Reeses inside, with Andes mints, with various colors of chocolate on top.  Let me know if you try them and you do a variation on a theme; I’d love to know what other people come up with!

The finished product!