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Monday, June 24, 2019

Drop Cookies Using Broken Pretzels in Place of Nuts



Yummy, crunchy, and with a bite of salty with the sweet -- a new favorite of my family, the chocolate  and butterscotch chip and pretzel drop cookie. My fears that the crunch of the pretzels wouldn't hold up to the dough were unfounded.

I sampled cookies from right after baking (still warm and melty) to three days post-baking and I have to say, the pretzel pieces remained crunchy with every tasting. Immediately after baking, the pretzel pieces had the texture of nuts in cookies, slightly crunchy, but with a little give. As the cookies cooled and aged, the crunch became more pronounced. After the cookies cooled, I kept them in a Rubbermaid lidded container. I would assume that keeping them in an airtight container helped maintain the crunch of the pretzels. In addition, the pretzels with which I baked were very crunchy to begin -- I did not use stale pretzels.

Anyway, I am so happy with the results of these cookies. I plan on baking more and increasing the pretzel content in the dough by 50%. I'll also add 1 tablespoon of flour to the dough, as the cookies came out a bit flat.

I used both chocolate and butterscotch chips, but I also think these would be good with just one of the chips. The butterscotch chips adds to the salted caramel effect, and I highly recommended using them. The dough was to die for and I could hardly keep myself from eating dough until I was sick. I refrained, however, as I also wanted to get an accurate cookie-count for my "recipe."

Here's what I used, which was inspired by the chocolate cookie recipe on a small (6-oz) package of chips.

6 tablespoons salted butter
2 scant tablespoons vegetable oil (the substitution of oil for some of the butter was merely to spare butter)
scant 3/4 cup of granulated sugar
scant tablespoon of molasses (the molasses and sugar were to replicate brown sugar)
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup of pretzel sticks, broken into 3 to 4 pieces each
extra broken pretzels to press in to the cookie dough before baking

I mixed the ingredients as I would any other chocolate chip cookie dough, blending butter and sugar, then adding egg and vanilla. When fully creamed, add in salt, soda, and flour. Then stir in the chips and pretzel pieces. Scoop by large tablespoons onto a lightly greased baking sheet. This amount of dough made about 2 dozen cookies for me. Press additional pretzel pieces into the tops of each mound of dough. I pressed 3 pieces into each, but would press 4 or 5 small pieces the next time, as the dough spread in baking and the 3 pieces looked a bit sparse.

Bake at 365 degrees for about 10 minutes, or until browned. I used a mostly-light colored, insulated baking sheet in a non-convection oven. If using a regular or a darkened baking sheet or in a convection oven, the timing might be 1 or 2 minutes less.

If you try baking cookies with pretzels, let me know how the cookies turn out for you.

11 comments:

  1. One of the made-in-Michigan ice cream flavors (in honor of the Detroit Tigers) uses round pretzel balls that are covered with a candy coating and they stay crunchy in ice cream--probably because of the candy coating--anyway, that makes me think that pretzels are hardier than I give them credit for.

    Just a thought--I find that when I use butter in cookie recipes, I need to chill them in the fridge for 2 hours (or the freezer for 1/2 an hour) and then they don't turn out so flat. (I shape them into slightly flattened balls prior to chilling them). Regardless, I've never had a problem with my family eating them up!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Kris,
      That ice cream flavor sounds yummy. I love the taste of salt with sweet. Good tip for chilling the dough. I do that with some cookie doughs. Of course, I'm usually in such a hurry to get them all baked!

      Delete
  2. My mother taught us to bake a test cookie or two and then adjust the recipe accordingly. The adjustment was usually to add flour so they would be more chewy and less crispy because that's the way we liked them. With trying only one cookie at the beginning prevented us of having a whole batch not quite like we wanted them. I have never heard about refrigerating drop cookies before baking them, but it makes sense.

    All of this talk about baking and experimenting with pretzels has me wanting to do some. However, we're trying to cut back on sweets, so I won't.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The problem with chilling them is .... when I make cookies, I want to eat one, NOW! :) The other trick I've learned to make them softer is to add 1-2 teaspoons of cornstarch to your dough--it really does work! Can you tell I like cookies?????

      Delete
    2. Hi live and learn,
      Believe it or not, I actually did make a test cookie. And it looked pretty good. Then I filled a different baking sheet with a full amount of dough and that batch flattened out more. But, I don't often do a test cookie, as I'm usually in a huge hurry to get them baked and move on to more work.

      I was pleasantly surprised that using pretzels in place of nuts would work so well. Of course, you miss the protein content of the nuts, but this worked so well that I'll do this again.

      Delete
  3. Looks delicious. I will have to try them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. They were very tasty, Marybeth. I liked the salty pretzel with the sweet cookie.

      Delete
  4. I must be the weird one but I like my cookies on the flatter side and crunchy. I'm hearing that I should use shortening instead of butter to get that crunch I'm looking for.

    Side question: Any one know why I can't comment on a new computer because I can't select my name from the drop down box? I also can't use anonymous either. I'm logged in my google account but it doesn't recognize it on Lili's blog so I can't comment on my new computer.

    Alice

    ReplyDelete
  5. Hi Alice,
    You're not the only one who can't leave comments. I just adjusted something else for comments to see if it will hep. It does mean that the comment area will look different. Maybe it will help.

    I've heard that too, about using shortening.

    ReplyDelete
  6. It looks different and now it looks like I can comment! Thanks for making the adjustment!

    Alice

    ReplyDelete

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