Treat yourself to these gooey salted caramel-stuffed cookies

Ella Walker upgrades her tea break with these incredibly moreish, gooey-in-the-middle cookies from baker-blogger-genius Jane Dunn

You could swap out the salted caramel for chocolate spread instead (PA)

When thinking of cookies, you may think crunchy, or you may think gooey and soft. But do you think a gooey soft centre of caramel? Well, you absolutely should!” says blogger and baker, Jane Dunn.

“These cookies have a molten caramel centre that is absolutely incredible, along with a salted cookie dough.”

Salted caramel-stuffed NYC cookies

Makes: 8 cookies

Ingredients:

125g unsalted butter

175g soft light brown sugar

1 egg (medium or large)

1 tsp vanilla extract

300g plain flour

1½ tsp baking powder

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp sea salt

250g milk chocolate chips or chunks

8-16 soft caramel sweets

Method:

1. Beat the butter and soft light brown sugar together until creamy. Add the egg and vanilla extract and beat again.

2. Add the plain flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and sea salt and combine until a cookie dough is formed, then add the chocolate chips or chunks and mix until they are evenly distributed.

3. Portion your dough out into eight balls – each should weigh about 110g. Once rolled into balls, flatten slightly and put one or two soft caramels in the middle, then wrap the cookie dough around the caramels and re-roll into balls. Put into the freezer for at least 30 minutes, or in the fridge for an hour or so. While the cookie dough is chilling, preheat the oven to 200C/180C fan and line two baking trays with parchment paper.

4. Take your cookies out of the freezer or fridge and put onto the lined trays (I do four cookies per tray) and bake for 12-14 minutes. Once baked, leave the cookies to cool on the trays for at least 30 minutes as they will continue to bake while cooling.

Customise:

You can substitute the caramels for spreads, such as chocolate and hazelnut spread or biscuit spread. Simply freeze teaspoons of spread for at least 30 minutes, then wrap the cookie dough around the frozen spread in the same way.

The milk chocolate can be switched to white or dark chocolate.

Make the cookie dough chocolate by using 250g plain flour and adding 35g cocoa powder.

Recipe extracted from ‘Jane’s Patisserie’ by Jane Dunn (Ebury Press, £20; photography by Ellis Parrinder).