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.
