Having recently made Joanne Chang's Sticky Bun Popcorn, I was still in a popcorn kind of mood when I decided to try the recipe for Caramel Popcorn Cookies from Pastry Love (the recipe is actually called "Jessi's Caramel Popcorn Cookies" because it was developed by a pastry chef named Jessi from one of Flour's retail locations).
While you could use store-bought caramel popcorn for these cookies, Chang provides a recipe to make your own and of course I went the homemade route. I used an air popper to make the popcorn and combined it with a mixture of butter and brown sugar that had been brought to a boil, with baking soda and kosher salt added at the end. I spread the popcorn out in a large nonstick roasting pan, put it in the oven for about 15 minutes, and let the popcorn cool. My caramel was slightly grainy (maybe I stirred it a little too vigorously) and if I was serving the popcorn merely as caramel popcorn, I would have tossed the batch and started over. But the popcorn still tasted fine and I figured that since it was going into cookie batter, no one would be able to notice my grainy caramel. I just went with it.
To make the cookie dough, you cream brown sugar and room temperature butter until light and fluffy; add an egg and vanilla; add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt); and stir in the caramel popcorn. I used a #20 scoop to portion out the dough, getting 29 cookies from a batch. Even though the cookies can be baked right away, I chilled the dough for a day because it worked best for my my schedule to postpone the actual baking; the recipe says you can chill the dough for up to a week.
The next day I sprinkled the cookies with a little kosher salt before baking them. The cookies flattened out nicely, and while you could see some lumps from the popcorn, I think it would be difficult to identify caramel popcorn as a key ingredient just by looking at them. These cookies were so good and had a perfect crisp texture around the edges, while remaining chewy in the middle. The cookie itself had a well developed caramel flavor, and the popcorn added a ton of textural interest and small bursts of caramel corn flavor. Overall, the cookie was a very nice balance of sweet and salty. And you definitely could not detect that my popcorn was subpar.
I would make this cookie again in a heartbeat and it was a big hit with my tasters. Grainy caramel corn or not, they were absolutely delicious.
Recipe: "Jessi's Caramel Popcorn Cookies" from Pastry Love by Joanne Chang.
While you could use store-bought caramel popcorn for these cookies, Chang provides a recipe to make your own and of course I went the homemade route. I used an air popper to make the popcorn and combined it with a mixture of butter and brown sugar that had been brought to a boil, with baking soda and kosher salt added at the end. I spread the popcorn out in a large nonstick roasting pan, put it in the oven for about 15 minutes, and let the popcorn cool. My caramel was slightly grainy (maybe I stirred it a little too vigorously) and if I was serving the popcorn merely as caramel popcorn, I would have tossed the batch and started over. But the popcorn still tasted fine and I figured that since it was going into cookie batter, no one would be able to notice my grainy caramel. I just went with it.
To make the cookie dough, you cream brown sugar and room temperature butter until light and fluffy; add an egg and vanilla; add the dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt); and stir in the caramel popcorn. I used a #20 scoop to portion out the dough, getting 29 cookies from a batch. Even though the cookies can be baked right away, I chilled the dough for a day because it worked best for my my schedule to postpone the actual baking; the recipe says you can chill the dough for up to a week.
I would make this cookie again in a heartbeat and it was a big hit with my tasters. Grainy caramel corn or not, they were absolutely delicious.
Recipe: "Jessi's Caramel Popcorn Cookies" from Pastry Love by Joanne Chang.
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