Chocolate, Caramel, Peanut Butter and Pretzel Cookies

I got the idea for these cookies from Sugar Cooking.  I thought, wow these are kind of like a Take 5 candy bar.  I was going to make them as is but the more I thought about it, I realized they were missing something…caramel.  There are also no peanuts in this cookie and I know a Take 5 has peanuts and peanut butter but the peanut butter chips will have to do for both.  Plus, how many other things can I stuff into this cookie?

This many!

If you don’t want to deal with cutting up the caramel, I suppose you could use toffee chips to get that flavor but you won’t get the chewy.  Let me tell you, that chewy is what keeps you coming back for more.  I ate way too many of these.  The crunchy, salty, chocolaty, peanut buttery elements don’t hurt either, let me tell you.  But oh, the chewy!

My sister even liked these cookies and she is one of the most picky people I know.  I didn’t even think she would try it just because of all the different elements.  She, just like my husband, doesn’t pull any punches when it comes to the stuff I cook or bake so when they like it, I know it is good.

The two most important things about this recipe are to a) chill your dough and b) let your cookies cool on the cookie sheet till you can take them off cleanly or this…will happen.

Follow those two rules and you shouldn’t have any problems and you will be thrilled with the results.

My GeekyLink for this week is Blogtor Who.  They have a Doctor Who podcast and they even did a podcast for Torchwood: Miracle Day.  The funny thing is, one of the commentators just recently started watching Doctor Who.  Sacrilege for someone doing a podcast about it I know, but it is awesome because now they are starting over, podcasting the Series (Season) 1 Doctor Who episodes with Christopher Eccleston aka The Ninth Doctor.  They put a new one up every Saturday!  Seeing as you can get those episodes on Netflix, why not follow along?

Spice Cake with Banana Cream Filling and Caramel Buttercream

Finally!  Here is my 34th birthday cake.  There were a few minor glitches, a few things I might change, but overall, it had the flavor profile that I was going for.  Spice cake with banana cream filling was one of the layers of my wedding cake and it was wonderful.  The problem was, I haven’t had it again since then.  That was almost 13 years ago and that is a long time to suppress a craving.  I almost went for it last year, but I knew certain people in my family (ahem, my sister) don’t necessarily like to try new flavors and I was worried that no one would eat it.  This year, I didn’t really care (however, I did have my 8 year old put together another dessert for her and other party poopers) and went for it.  I wanted to add another element besides a plain vanilla buttercream and narrowed it down to cinnamon or caramel buttercream.  Obviously, the caramel won.

Let’s talk about my issues with the cake.  First, the cake ended up just a little dry.  The comments in the original post all call to add an extra egg, which I did.  One comment suggested using buttermilk instead of sour cream, which I considered, but lately I have been having great success with sour cream in my cakes.  I think I will give that a try next time.  Also, I was adapting from a 9 inch springform pan to two 9 inch cake pans so there is the possibility that I simply baked it too long.  Second, the filling was a bit difficult.  I had to do it twice because you are cooking egg yolks, and if you don’t separate them well you will get bits of cooked egg whites in it so, really, just separate the eggs well.  I also think I should have halved the whipped cream I added to it, I could have used the rest to decorate it.  It made the filling less stable but I wanted it in there as well as extra banana slices.  It tasted great though.  Lastly, the frosting.  I had to attempt this one twice as well.  I just am not great with caramel.  Both times, it seized up on me (after heating your water and sugar you are adding cooler cream and vanilla and if you don’t keep stirring and if your cream and vanilla aren’t room temperature, your sugar WILL get hard) but the second time I was able to heat it up the hard sugar enough in the cream that didn’t get incorporated for me to melt it back into a caramel consistency.  The moment that you add the cream and vanilla to your sugar is one of those moments in baking where you wish you had three hands so you just have to make the best of it.  Also, I think doubling the caramel mixture would have been a plus.

So I finished the cake Friday night, and even with all my issues, it still tasted fabulous on Saturday evening.