email this pageWhenever we make Chocolate Caramel Pecan Sandies, the kitchen fills with the most delicious aroma that comes from baking with butter, and we are reminded of what the late Richard Sax said about homemade cookies. On his list of great moments in cookie history in Classic Home Desserts (Chapters, 1994) Sax wrote, “Cookie fans know that real cookies must be baked at home.”
When we first saw this recipe, which came from the American Dairy Farmers, we linked the word “sandy: to shortbread, the buttery Scotch cookies often rolled in a circle, cut into wedges and scored with a fork. But when we took a closer look, we noticed in addition to shortbread ingredients (butter, flour and sugar), there were finely ground pecans and an egg. This made them more like sables, the crumbly French cookies made from dough that’s often shaped in logs and sliced — like old-fashioned icebox cookies.
Fleur de sel, or sea salt, may seem like an unusual ingredient in a cookie recipe. Coarser grained and not as salty as regular salt, fleur de sel is hand-harvested from ponds along the coast of France and does the same magic for Chocolate Caramel Pecan Sandies that salted nuts do for ice cream. These cookies, drizzled with melted caramel candies and bittersweet chocolate, are not the same as the ones you buy in a package in the supermarket, and they are irresistible. When you eat the last one, you’ll start unwrapping caramels for the next batch.
Chocolate Caramel Pecan Sandies
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Ingredients
¼ teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2⁄3 cup firmly packed light brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup pecans, lightly toasted and very finely ground
18 to 20 caramel candies, cut in half
2 tablespoons whole milk
1 cup chopped bittersweet chocolate or semisweet chocolate morsels (at least 60% cocoa)
2 to 3 tablespoons large crystal sea salt or fleur de sel, as needed
2. Cream butter and sugar with a mixer until light and fluffy. Add egg and vanilla; beat to blend. Add flour mixture in batches, mixing between each. Stir in ground pecans. Cover and chill dough until firm.
3. Preheat oven to 350F.
4. Roll dough into 1-inch balls with floured hands. Place on baking sheet and flatten slightly. Bake 13 to 15 minutes.
5. Cool on pan 2 to 3 minutes. Remove cookies from pan; cool on wire racks.
6. Combine caramel candies and milk in a saucepan; cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until caramels melt. Drizzle over cookies with a spoon.
7. Place chocolate in plastic bag in a bowl; heat on medium at 30-second intervals in microwave. Massage between intervals until chocolate melts. Cut a small hole in bottom corner of bag; drizzle chocolate across each cookie. Sprinkle with sea salt. Let sit until chocolate is firm. Makes about 3 dozen.
Recipe Courtesy of the Amrican Dairy Farmers, Relish Cooking With Kids, "Play Dough," December 2007.
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