Sea Salt Caramel Rolled Cookies

In the last year or so, sea salt caramel-flavored desserts have exploded on the culinary scene.  Being a huge fan of exploding caramel, I decided to find a sea salt caramel rolled cookie recipe.  After all, cookies are my bread and butter and I'd already made all the caramel paletas and artisan candies my family's tummies could hold!  Though I Googled high and Googled low, I didn't find a single caramel rolled cookie recipe. It seemed the only solution was to develop my own.  

Being a reasonable and experienced cookier, I knew where to find the most delicious sugar cookie recipe.  I immediately turned to LilaLoa's blog because her recipes are unbeatable.  Actually you should beat the dough to make your cookies turn out right, but I think you know what I mean.  I was looking for LilaLoa's Super Amazing Vanilla 2.0 recipe found here.   I added the "super amazing," because it is, and LilaLoa is much too humble to say it herself, though everyone thinks so!

All I needed was a tiny tweak to the recipe and a super saturated caramel flavoring!  I bought every itty bitty bottle of the new Wilton Treatology Salted Caramel I could find locally.  #yeahthatwasme   #sorrynotsorryeasttexaspeeps   It turned out to be just right!

Whee!!!  I was set for a delicious experience armed with, don't forget, a super amazing recipe!  The following is LilaLoa's Vanilla 2.0 recipe with my tweaks in italics.  It's almost the same, y'all, with the exception of browned butter, adding a bit of milk, and slight changes to the salt and flavorings!

Sea Salt Caramel Rolled Cookies

1 cup browned butter

2 tablespoons milk

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated white sugar

2 extra large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 teaspoon Wilton Treatology Salted Caramel flavoring

1/4 teaspoon table salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon ground sea salt

4 (or 4 1/2) cups flour

Brown 1 cup of butter (You can find a tutorial here.) Allow browned butter to cool to room temperature and add 2 tablespoons of milk to the pan to replace lost liquid.  Cream the browned butter and both sugars together.  If you have any brown sugar lumps, you should crush them up or pull them out.  They make weird dents in your baked cookies.  Add the eggs and the vanilla and caramel flavoring, mix thoroughly.  Add both types of salt and baking powder and mix the dough again.

Before you add the flour, let's have a little chat.  Different altitudes and humidity levels change the amount of flour you should add.  Add only 3 cups to begin with.  Then add additional flour 1/2 cup at a time until the dough is no longer sticky and holds together.  (This happens at about 4 cups of flour for me...except in the winter when it happens at 3 31/2 cups of flour.)  Roll dough and cut cookie shapes.  Freeze for 5 minutes or so, if you wish, before baking.   

Bake at 350F.  If you roll to 3/16" thick, bake for about 7 minutes.  If you roll to 1/4" thick, bake for about 9-10 minutes.

Did you try it???  Was it a caramel explosion of goodness in your tummy?  Let me know what you think, and be sure to hop over to thank the super amazing LilaLoa for the brilliance of her recipe and her generosity to the cookie community and the world beyond!  Many thanks to my darling friend Paula at Dear Sweet Cookies who worked alongside me baking and decorating these adorable Halloween cookies, contributing her talent and sweet styling.  Uber cute Halloween Stack cookie cutter created by the ever awesome Ronee at That's a Nice Cookie Cutter.  I'll always appreciate a link and shout out on Instagram and Facebook if you use this recipe!