Caramel Stuffed Chocolate Cookies

Baking with a purpose always seems to work out pretty well in our kitchen.  Instead of experimenting just for kicks, creating a dessert for a specific event ensures we follow at least a general guideline of a recipe.  A was headed up to the Poconos for a 4th of July get-together with her fiance's family, and I was getting together with some girlfriends from school- a double batch of chocolate cookies would do the trick.  We based our idea on this recipe from Completely Delicious- an apt name for the way these cookies turned out.

I started out simply doubling the ingredients list, using two flax eggs and two regular eggs but following the rest of recipe exactly.  Armed with my trusty handwritten "recipe on a 3x5" and a cold lime seltzer water (highly recommend the Seagram's variety even though it's $$), I got my mixing on.

I was forced strongly encouraged to sift the dry ingredients, which made a bit of a mess but quite possibly contributed to an extra smooth batter. A LOT of cocoa powder goes into these cookies, providing quite a bit of rich chocolate-y goodness.

Once the batter came together, I popped it in the fridge to chill while I helped finish prepping for dinner.  I conveniently made these cookies when there were a couple extra pairs of hands in the kitchen (boys will help with anything after you feed them) which proved to be tremendously helpful.  Our twist on these cookies was to stuff them with caramel- or in our case, caramel Hershey's Kisses.  A took on the tedious job of unwrapping and flattening most of a bag of Kisses while the rest of us assembled.

The trick here is to take one cookie's worth of dough (about 2 tablespoons) and divide it into two parts.  Flatten each piece, place a caramel or Hershey's Kiss (or other small candy!) in the center of one piece and cover with the remaining piece.  Pinch the edges together and shape the cookie into a disc.  We all had unique techniques to form our cookies, but they all ended up relatively uniform in shape and size.

This shaping process provided some beautifully rounded cookies with a crackled surface and a bit of caramel peeking out the edges.

The spread of the cookies was minimal and the baking time short, allowing us to work our way through the double batch in good time- the hardest part was transferring the gooey goods to a cooling rack.  The chocolate and caramel in the center really keeps these guys moist and chewy- our favorite!

I spy a leaky seal in the back...

The surprise inside was a big hit with our friends and family, and we have to thank Completely Delicious for providing a superb base recipe- her chocolate cookies alone would be terrific.  It would also be fun to experiment with different fillings.  Maybe a bit of marshmallow and a chunk of graham for s'mores cookies??