I don’t usually bake cookies because (1) I always end up with a lot of them and (2) I am the only person in my household who will usually eat them, unless I make lemon, honey and chamomile cookies.

But I wanted to try something different, something involving caramel. Searching online I found mostly recipes that either took a huge chuck of caramel in each cookie or that involved Rolo or some other candy. Since what I had in mind was to have pieces of caramel spread through the cookies, similar to La Mère Poulard’s cookies, I figured it’d be easier just to come up with something instead of trying to find a recipe online.

The solution for how to use the caramel came up when shopping for a gift and I saw some French salted caramels for sale. They are delicious, but also rather expensive to be used in baking. At least knowing what to look for, I started searching all supermarkets and grocery stores close to me for something halfway through fancy French caramels and shitty dollar store candy. I ended up settling on English salted caramel fudge, which was good on its own, but would probably work better on the cookies.

With that out of the way, I just needed to come up with a recipe and hope it would work out. So I took to our kitchen bookshelves and adapted a couple of recipes to create my own based on Michael Ruhlman’s Ratio and Larousse des Desserts. And I have to say it worked out pretty well and I leave the recipe so you can decide it for yourself.

Salted Caramel and Pecan cookies (makes about 30 cookies)

Ingredients

110g softened butter

180g brown sugar

100g salted caramel fudge, thinly chopped

90g pecans, thinly chopped

1 egg

225g all-purpose flour

¼ teaspoon baking powder

Pinch of salt

Directions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 170 degrees Celsius (340 Fahrenheit).
2. Add the butter and sugar in a bowl and mix them using the paddle attachment.
3. Once they mixed, add in the egg until it forms a homogenous dough.
4. Add in the flour, baking powder and salt little by little until it’s well mixed.
5. Put in the pieces of caramel and pecans. Once they are incorporated into the dough, make small balls and spread on a baking tray, flattening them. At this point, use a cookie cutter if you wish to give them a shape.
6. Put the cookies in the oven and bake for about 10-15 minutes. Once done, put them on a cooling rack.
7. Lick the paddle to avoid wasting sweet goodness (optional) while you wait them to cool down. Make yourself a nice cup of coffee and enjoy the cookies (dipping is allowed and recommended).