Sweet and Salty Caramel Pretzel Cookies

Alyssa Bartling
Hour 1
Sweet and Salty Caramel Cookies

Ingredients
1 3/4 c. light brown sugar
1 c. butter melted
1 egg
1 egg yolk
1 T. vanilla
2 c. flour
1/2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
1 c. old fashioned rolled oats
1 c. pretzel sticks or twists, roughly chopped
2 c. corn flakes
1 c. caramel bits

Directions
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Place the sugar in a large mixing bowl. Add the hot melted butter and stir until smooth. Add the eggs and vanilla and stir to combine. Whisk together the flour, baking soda, salt and oats; stir the flour mixture into the wet ingredients.

Gradually add the pretzels, corn flakes, and caramel bits, stirring to mix everything throughout the dough. Scoop dough into generous 2-3 tablespoon size balls and place on a parchment lined baking sheet. Leave a couple inches between each cookie.

Bake for 12-14 minutes. Remove from the oven before the edges of the cookies have browned. The cookies should be puffy and cracked across the top. Let cool for 1-2 minutes on the baking sheet and then remove to a wire rack. When the cookies have completely cooled, store in an airtight container.

Preparation Method
Traditionally, cookies are made with the creaming mixing method. But this recipe is very unique. Not wanting to meddle with this new kind of cookie, I left the recipe as it was.  To me, this cookie's mixing method is of modified creaming and a small part of the muffin method. Instead of creaming solid butter with sugar, the recipe is modified so that the sugar is combined with melted butter. When the butter is melted inside of solid, the cookie becomes more dense cause there is no pockets left behind by any solid butter in the product. This cookie also contains a small part of the muffin method, in which all of the wet ingredients and dry ingredients are combined separately, then the dry ingredients are add to the wet ingredients. Both of these mixing methods made this cookie denser and flatter in height.

Critique
Even though most people might not want to try a sweet and salty cookies, this was delicious! The cookies' appearance isn't very unique. There is little to no browning, so the cookies are a relatively pale. You can also see all the different components of the cookie, the melted caramel bits, the crushed cornflakes, and the salty pretzel pieces. The taste of this cookie is out of this world. The caramel makes the cookies extremely sweet, but not overbearing. The saltiness of the cookie also mellows out the sweet. But the two flavors make the cookies absolutely scrumptious. The texture is a little tough at first, which is normal for some oatmeal based cookies.  But they also become very chewy at the same time. The aroma of these cookies are amazing! The vanilla and caramel together really stand out. The aroma is very luscious and Christmasy. I would definitely make this cookie again. I was relatively easy and quick, and the cookies can last for a very long time in an airtight container. This experience taught me that even though some cookies are made without traditional mixing methods, the can still be easy to create and turn out amazing.