Sweet, salty, crunchy, and chewy, these Caramel Pretzel Cookies are the newest addition to your cookie jar. Just a few simple ingredients with a toffee-like twist. They’re great fresh OR frozen!
Time for recipe number 3 in our February caramel series. After putting you through that multilayer delight that was last week’s Salted Caramel Brownies, I figured you deserve an easier treat.
I could probably come up with some story about the first time I ate caramel cookies. Or about how I used to love eating those thin pretzel sticks with frozen green grapes. Somehow I would connect that back to these cookies.
Now, I could do all of those things but I won’t. Not this time.
Instead I’ll just tell you a little bit about the epic chewiness. If you follow cookie science, then you know that brown sugar adds a chew factor while granulated sugar leads to spread. Caramel sauce, though, results in an entirely different creature. A sort of rare subspecies in the chewy cookie family.
All of the other ingredients are standard cookie parts. You’ve got your butter, egg, flour. A combination of baking powder and baking soda to give them just the right amount of puff and spread. Usually this is when we add several handfuls of chocolate chunks. I’ve made a sizable dent in my chocolate stash recently, so until I restock we’re going to use pretzels. Besides, who doesn’t love a little crunch?
A couple of new friends recently discovered my freezer stash, including a bag of these Caramel Pretzel Cookies. They taste like toffee and heaven rolled into one.
I’ll go get one and leave you to it. Happy baking!
- ½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- ½ cup packed dark brown sugar
- ¼ cup salted caramel sauce
- 1 egg, room temperature
- 2 cups flour, spooned & leveled
- ½ tsp sea salt
- ½ tsp baking powder
- ¼ tsp baking soda
- ¾ cups lightly crushed pretzels
- Whisk together the flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda, then set aside. In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the butter and sugars until light and fluffy, 2-3 minutes. Next, beat in the caramel sauce until fully incorporated. Then beat in the egg until just combined.
- Turn the mixer off and add the flour mixture all at once. Mix on the lowest speed until a few flour streaks remain. Add in the pretzels and mix only until dispersed.
- Refrigerate the cookie dough for 1 hour. Near the end, preheat the oven to 375ºF. Scoop rounded tablespoonfuls of dough onto lined sheet pans. Bake for 13-15 minutes, until the edges are set and the centers are still soft. Cool the cookies on the pan so that they firm up.
- Store in an airtight container at room temperature for 5 days or in the freezer. (They taste great frozen too!)
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