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!

Cookie and Clipart Collaboration

It is my thrill to share that I will be working with Jessica Weible of JW Illustrations to "cookie" (yes, I use it as a verb) some of her art!  Her adorable clipart collections, printables, fonts, digi stamps and papers bring a smile to my face, and I couldn't be happier for this opportunity.  She has been a sweetheart to work with, both kind and supportive.  And if she wasn't nice enough, she also has a weekly freebie on her site.  Isn't that generous?

Be sure to check out her blog as well!  It is full of ideas for party themes, delicious recipes, tutorials and even those freebies!  Jessica has it going on, y'all!

If you have a special set of cookies, a fun party, or some pages to scrapbook, hop on by and load up your cart with the cutest art around.  This is not to be missed!

Here is my first set of cookies using Jessica's Stick Figure Bunnies Clipart:

Thanks again, Jessica, for this opportunity to bring your art to life in cookie form!

Cookie Coaching

Birthday Cookies for Mom
or
Second Try (after Kim)

When I first began to decorate cookies I had recently resigned a ministry job with children.  With an empty nest at home, that calling had become my whole heart.  Post employment, I had long hours to fill, and this task combined my love of baking and my desire to do for others.  Bonus:  none of my friends or family ever said no to free cookies!

As mentioned in a previous post, I had jumped into using royal icing after merely skimming one recipe, and had made delicious, though not-too-lovely cookies.  I posted a photo of those first cookies on my Facebook Timeline, and my friend Kim, who happened to be a former student I had taught when she was in fifth grade, inquired about them.  She had begun decorating cookies with royal icing just a few months ahead of me, but she had read recipes, searched out blogs and prepared for weeks and weeks before she made her first batch.

Kim is a loving and generous person.  She offered to send me blog links, tips she had gleaned, recipes, and basically everything I needed to bake a better batch of cookies.  This is one of the favorite parts of my cookie story:  Kim, who was my Language Arts student when she was 10, flipped the script and became my cookie teacher 20- um, ahem, -something years later!

The maxim every teacher in the world has quoted "practice makes perfect" is mostly accurate.  In my case, I'd say  practice makes gradually better and better.  I continued to be coached and taught by Kim, and encouraged by the positive reaction friends had to my Easter cookies and my flower and bird cookies for Mom's birthday that spring.  I was having a lot of fun, and cookies could fill many hours.  They were a simply a nice little hobby until I met the Angry Birds...  (to be continued)


Check out Kim's fantastic page Barefoot N Baking and give her a "like."

Celebrate a Faithful Life

Celebrating A Faithful Life

This set of cookies celebrates a woman's life filled with the beauty of faith and grace.  As I dreamed on these cookies, I thought of the responsibilities of her life.  Daughter.  Pastor's wife.  Mother.  Teacher.  Counselor.  Friend.  In all of these she is a woman of faith.  More recently, an unbidden role crept into her life.  Cancer patient.  The family wailed and cried when the diagnosis of incurable ovarian cancer was determined.  For a while we refused to accept a new reality for her, a woman who was otherwise healthy and active, who went marching into retirement with dreams of travel, helping those in need and working in her beautiful garden.  This wasn't the plan!

Although travel was mostly set aside, and helping others became spoken encouragement instead of delivering Meals on Wheels, the call of the beauty and peace in the garden remained.  The two surgeries, endless rounds of chemo and perpetual needle sticks/IVs/exams became something not to be simply endured, but seen as tools, the hoes and herbicides, to manage and beat back the weeds of disease.  As these implements were welcomed, strength was gained and better health flourished.  She was able to tend her beloved day lilies and all her blooms.  The beauty there fed faith in God's grace, that love she relies on when the world says "all is lost."  The garden says "here is My beauty, offered to you now and eternally."   

This set of cookies celebrates my mother's life, filled with the beauty of faith and grace.  It represents her favorite day lilies, cone flowers, hydrangeas, and blueberries, little birds and rabbits.  I honor the life she gave me, her firstborn daughter, her love and gentle counsel through the years.  I am blessed by her respect for me, and the thousands of ways she has offered encouragement through the joy of our lives together and the pain of loss.  I celebrate my mother's love of God's beautiful garden of this earth and her faith in His eternity.   

I love you, Mom!

***These cookies are part of a collaborative project designed to honor Anita of Sweet Hope Cookies (https://www.facebook.com/SweetHopeCookies) for her tireless work on behalf of those living with ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease).  I have followed Anita's work for quite some time, and finally met her in Salt Lake City at Cookie Con.  She is full of joyous mischief, witty remarks and is a constant blur of action living her love for others out loud.  Anita works for support of ALS patients because her brother Randy died from the effects of this debilitating disease.  I feel a kinship with her, as my grandfather, my mother's father, was stricken with this illness when I was a young girl, and died a few years later.  It is my intent to follow Anita's path of generosity and deep care for others through cookies.  I find it quite apropos to celebrate the life of my mother while celebrating Anita's inspiration, as they each have added so much sweetness to this world!*** #CelebrateLife

Faith and Flour

Who would have believed it would be cookies?

A wise woman, my pastor, in fact, taught me that all believers are given dominion (Genesis 1:26).  At the time I was wrestling daily, if not hourly, with purpose.  It was agonizing, and I ended many days feeling empty, when my aim was to be fruitful.  I had experienced a heartbreaking change in my professional life.  I resigned the job, but it had not been my plan.  Sometimes the Holy Spirit pushes you, ready-or-not, out of a dangerous and deadly-to-the-spirit situation.   A year later, belief was strong, but my faith needed a giant boost.  Reflecting on dominion in a totally different way, thanks to Pastor Shelley, I could step one foot before the other not knowing the plan, but having faith that whatever God had waiting was unbelievable good.

With many, many unfilled hours stretching before me I decided to bake.  I had frozen paletas (Mexican style fresh pops) all summer, but it was cold outdoors with the coming of winter.  The oven was the more attractive option.

I had seen lovely cookies somewhere online, skimmed a recipe, and waded in softening the butter and measuring flour.  The cookies were simple for a girl who thought the best toy ever was an Easy Bake Oven.  But royal icing?  I was ignorant that it is tricky, taking knowledge and finesse.  This mystical icing is as fragile as fairy dust, and takes the bloom of the peony and the sweetest song of the lark to love it into a workable form.  

Upon finishing the cookies, my kitchen featured several hundred drips of royal icing in rainbow colors on the counters, floor, and sink, truly every surface.  I am not easily vanquished, even by meringue powder, so I kept at it.  But I'll be honest, though I was proud of those cookies, I still didn't see dominion.  I'll share more of the story in the next few posts.  If you struggle with purpose,  I hope you'll find something for your encouragement here.  

My First Cookies 

or

She's Come a Long Way, Baby!