Salted Caramel Stuffed Cookies

Soft, chewy cookies filled with a layer of gooey, rich salted caramel. Cookie, chocolate, caramel... Yum.

If you read my last blog post about salted caramel sauce you will have read my high praise for my latest cookies and no doubt been waiting eagerly for their reveal... Well wait no longer, here they are!
My favourite cookie recipe of all time adapted to include another one of my mega-favourites: salted caramel!! One big ball of chilled caramel wrapped in a bigger ball of cookie dough! When the cookie spreads in the oven so does the caramel layer. Can you even imagine?! Especially if you enjoy these warm out of the oven, the caramel layer oozes out and is super gooey. Of course the cookie itself cannot be overlooked, it is still delicious, soft and chewy and big and fat! The only way a cookie should be.

Twix Cupcakes

Rich, chocolatey, piled high with luscious caramel buttercream with a subtle crunch from the biscuit base. Everything good about a Twix in a cupcake!

I love chocolate bars and I love cupcakes so the prospect of emulating the flavours of a much loved chocolate bar in a fluffy, moist cupcake is really about as exciting as it gets!

Especially a chocolate bar like a Twix with all it's different flavours and textures - smooth chocolate, gooey caramel and the crisp biscuit base. I've wanted to make salted caramel buttercream for a while now and the idea of Twix cupcakes came to me when trying to decide how to use this buttercream. I cannot even think of enough adjectives to describe how beautiful this buttercream is, I was eating heaped tablespoons of it while decorating - and this is coming from someone who doesn't like a lot of buttercream on cakes (believe it or not). It is very sweet but the saltiness takes the sickly edge off and the creamy flavour has the perfect sharpness to it to compliment the richness of the very chocolatey cakes. I don't know about you but there is something sooo satisfying about making things like caramel from scratch; it's easy and impressive and delicious. The crunch of the biscuit base also cuts through the softness of the absolute mound of buttercream and gives a real Twix-like feel to the cupcakes.

If you really want to know how good these are: my mother took some into work to share and I have now been asked by her colleague to bake a batch every week for the office. Are you desperate to make these yet?! Don't wait any longer! Here is the recipe...

"Best Ever" Smarties Cookies

These may be my favourite cookies ever: chewy and gooey with the perfect chocolatey "crunch" and burst of colour from the smarties!

I was debating whether or not to post the recipe for these but Martin said they were the best cookies ever (hence the "best ever" smarties cookies...) and I really enjoyed them so I decided to share this wonderful recipe with you all! After a few batches and trying different things to make them as perfect as possible for you all, these were definitely my favourite!

Naturally the type of ingredients used in a recipe affect the way the finished product will turn out. The recipe calls for sugar and butter, but which sugar and butter will give you the type of cookie you want? Granulated only will see your cookies spread much more giving a thinner and crunchier bake, whereas brown sugar will give a much chewier cookie (this recipe uses a combination of both!). Melted butter also gives a much chewier texture than creamed butter which a lot of cookie recipes and most of my cake recipes call for. The use of cornflour in this recipe also adds to the gooey-chewiness of these cookies. So clearly everything in this recipe is chosen to make these cookies as moist and deliciously chewy as possible, and I would say it worked! They are sooo chewy and moist with just the right amount of buttery sweetness, and who doesn't love smarties?! No one, that's who...