Homemade Salted Caramels

I am very excited about these homemade salted caramels. They are just as delicious as the caramels you'll find in a gourmet candy shop. They are so unbelievably tasty!

I've been totally intimidated about making candy. For example, what the heck is "hard ball stage?" How is it different than "soft crack stage?" How do these caramels end up chewy while this pecan brittle ends up crunchy?

Fougasse with Olives and Rosemary (Provençal Bread)

This fougasse with olives and rosemary is a chewy, crispy, and flavorful rustic bread with an open crumb. If your favorite part of artisan bread is the crust, you will love fougasse.

Fougasse is one of the breads of Provence, in the south of France. It's a crusty yeasted flatbread that is often shaped like a leaf, with cuts to create openings in the bread. The dough is similar to baguette dough, and the interior is airy like a baguette but just flatter and with more crust! It's also much easier and less stressful to shape.

Sourdough Crackers | The Leftover Sourdough Starter Dilemma

These sourdough crackers are made with unfed sourdough starter. They have the tang of sourdough bread, and are a great way to use up the starter that you would normally throw away when feeding your levain.

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip, Caramel, and Sea Salt Cookies

These browned butter chocolate chip, caramel, and sea salt cookies are not only gooey when they first come out of the oven, they stay gooey even after they have cooled. They're pretty magical.

"Browned butter?" you ask!

Instead of creaming the butter and sugar as you would for most chocolate chip cookie recipes, you actually boil the butter until it is golden brown. You have to watch very carefully when you do this, because the butter can quickly turn black... and you'll have to start over.

As you brown the butter, the water evaporates, and the wonderful buttery flavor gets even more concentrated.

The cookies are filled with chopped semi-sweet chocolate, chocolate chips, and caramel bits. Finally, they are sprinkled with flaked sea salt.

They are slightly under baked, producing an amazingly gooey center (P.S. for those of you who are squeamish about bite marks on food photos, I promise, this view is not of bite marks! No teeth were used to produce this photo).

Browned Butter Chocolate Chip, Caramel, and Sea Salt Cookies

Ingredients

14 T (200g) unsalted butter, cut into 1/2 inch slices
1/2 C (100g) white sugar
3/4 C (150 g) packed dark brown sugar
1 1/4 tsp fine sea salt (table salt will do)
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 large egg yolk
2 C (255 g) all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 C (135 g) semisweet chocolate, chopped
3/4 C (135 g) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 C (75 g) caramel bits
Flaked sea salt for sprinkling

Instructions

1. Place the butter into light colored frying or saute pan and cook, stirring constantly, over medium high heat. When the butter begins to boil, pay very close attention. When the butter starts to turn golden brown, after about 3 to 5 minutes, immediately remove it from the heat and pour it into a large bowl. 
2. Add the white sugar, brown sugar, fine sea salt, and vanilla. Whisk until the mixture cools somewhat.
3. Add the egg and egg yolk, and whisk for about 2 minutes, until the mixture begins to lighten in color. 
4. Fold in the flour and baking soda until just incorporated. Fold in the chocolate, chips, and caramel pieces. Do not over mix. 
5. Divide the dough into golf ball sized pieces, about 70 grams each. My dough yielded 14 cookies. Shape the dough pieces into balls, place them on a plate, and sprinkle them with sea salt. 
6. Cover the dough balls with plastic, and refrigerate over night. 
7. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F with a rack in the middle of the oven. 
8. Line two baking sheets with parchment and place the cookie balls about 2 inches apart on each sheet. 
9. Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 8 to 12 minutes (it took 12 minutes in my case). Do not over cook. 
10. Cool the cookies on the baking sheet for 5 minutes, and then transfer to a cooling rack. 

This recipe is adapted from the amazing bread book Josey Baker Bread: Get Baking - Make Awesome Bread - Share the Loaves. Yes, a bread book! And a very good one.