Caramel Stuffed Cookies

That's not what Laura calls these cookies.  But I'm not much for long recipe names.  I should call this recipe Irresistible Chocolate Cookies.  This recipe says you'll end up with 18 cookies.  I only got 15 and I ate all but 5 of them in 2 days!  I finally took the last five to work to stop myself!!  These are sooooo good! They are best right out of the oven.  Second best would be frozen or chilled and finally at room temperature. 

They are really pretty simple too.  I started by sifting my cocoa powder through a fine mesh screen onto some wax paper. 

Then I used my mini blender (it's a magic bullet) to blend the milke with the cocoa.  I didn't have any whipping cream so I just used the milk I had on hand (1%). 

Next I broke up the cookie dough into a bowl and dumped in the mini chocolate chips.  I really think using mini chocolate chips is critical to this recipe.  They are so small that they stayed melted even the next day, and really gave the cookies a truffle consistency.  That was one thing that was so yummy about these cookies.  Finally I added the cocoa/milk mixture. 

I used my hands to mix it together.  That was pretty messy and sticky.  Plus when I scooped out the dough later I still found tiny pockets of dough that didn't have any cocoa powder in them. 

The dough was really tasty on it's own.  Jonathan really liked the dough.  Between the two of us we probably ate two cookies worth raw.  I assume that (and that my scoop might have been a little big) is why I only got 15 cookies instead of 18. 

Then I just used my handy cookie/ice cream scoop to dish out the cookies.  I filled it full with dough.  Then I pushed a Rolo into the center.  That pushed out enough dough that it didn't take much to just mush it around the Rolo to get full coverage.  It's really sticky dough so I tried to minimize handling it too much. 

I crammed all the cookies onto one cookie sheet to freeze them for 15 minutes and then I split the cookies between two cookie sheets for cooking. 

While the cookies froze and the oven preheated I unwrapped the Rolo's for the "chocolate" drizzle. 

I let the cookies rest on the cookie sheet for a couple of minutes before moving them to a cooling rack. 

One of the cookies kind of fell apart as I moved it to the cookie sheet.  You can see the caramel peaking through the chocolately cookie. 

After the cookies had cooled I drizzled the melted Rolos over them and sprinkled it with Kosher Salt.  I don't think the drizzle added to the flavor or experience other than giving the salt something to stick to.  The salt gave the cookies that wonderful salty/sweet contrast.  I didn't use as much salt as the recipe called for so I only got the salty/sweet contrast in some bites.  I really liked it that way because I also really liked the just sweet bites.  Those bites were super chocolately and wonderfully rich. 

If you plan to store these cookies you probably would want to skip the chocolate drizzle.  It made them really messing when I stored them (for one measly day!) in layers.  So if you have more will power than me and do store them with the chocolate drizzle in place, store them in one layer in a ridge plastic container.  The ziploc was even messier than the cookies stacked on top of each other. 

I'll have to make these again at some point...late on a Sunday night so I don't have time to eat too many before I can take them to work... Jonathan was very disappointed when he went looking for one two days later and there weren't any.  He had only had a half of one the night I made them.  Poor guy!