52 weeks of baking: 39 - salted caramel dark chocolate chip cookies

Long enough name for ya? These cookies you guys. They are as insane as they sound. Salted caramel dark chocolate chip cookies. I mean, that's a hell of a cookie. I am becoming more and more obsessed with Sally's Baking Addiction, and girlfriend knows how to come up with some delicious goodies. Her recipe for these babies here. These cookies are very very good. SO rich. I mean, there's a freaking rolo baked inside. A rolo! You cannot lose.

Can we stop for a moment and just talk about how fantastic the lighting in my kitchen was for the first half of these photos? Good light makes a world of difference. Forgive the second, they were taken in artificial light after the sun went down because these cookies had to chill for two dang hours!

A MELTED ROLO INSIDE. Oh man, it's good. And the sea salt on these is perfect. I'm so glad someone decided to start adding crunchy sea salt to sweet things. The cookie itself is delicious, worth trying on it's own sans caramel if you're feeling something a little simpler. And speaking of simplicity, next time I think I'd opt for just caramels inside instead of rolos. Don't get me wrong, the rolo inside is brilliant, it's just along with caramel and dark chocolate chips, it adds milk chocolate into the mix. There's already so much going on in these things, and all of it good, I just would maybe simplify it a tad by losing the milk chocolate. These are perfect cookies to make if you are say, having a really rough day. Or week. Or month. Or if your life is completely perfect, make them anyway.

This was my fortieth week of baking. How insane is that? FORTY weeks have already gone by. Only twelve left in the year. Only twelve more baked goodies left. It's a little sad, seeing the end approaching. It's become such a nice and welcome part of my life, and I'm pretty proud of my little project. I'll need to think up a new one for next year! 52 weeks of... who knows!
EDIT: I couldn't believe it was the 40th week of the year, so I googled it. Turns out it's the 39th. I somehow misnumbered my weeks and missed 28. All is adjusted now, everything is numbered correctly. Forgive me, I am terrible with numbers. Just copy past that last paragraph onto next week's post with your mind, okay?

52 weeks of baking: 35 - salted caramel brownies

Baking was shoved to Sunday this week. As previously mentioned, this week has been a tad rough for various reasons. Busy busy busy, so Sunday baking it was. And because rough weeks need chocolate, brownies were needed. And not just plain brownies, but salted caramel brownies. Thank you Deb.

This was my first time making caramels from scratch, and it turns out it's very easy, as long as you don't do it immediately after rolling out of bed. Let's chat about how it took me three batches of caramels to get it straight. The first batch I melted my spatula into, the second I forgot to salt, and the third was successful. So I'm down a spatula and I've got a plate full of unsalted caramels in my fridge. But I've also got delicious salted caramel brownies.

These are dangerously dark and gooey. These will probably fall apart as you eat them, but it's worth it. The caramel is perfectly salted and it's melty and chewy in the right proportions. Caramel and chocolate... enough said. I've eaten... a few. Needless to say, they're very good. Wonderful way to wrap up your week. Every week should end in brownies. We'll see if they make it until tomorrow.