Butterscotch, Pretzel and Chocolate Chip Cookies

Do you know what’s boring?

Salad…salad for lunch…

Salad for dinner. I am over salad.

I inhaled this chicken dinner last night after teaching BodyPump. If I ate one more bowl of leftover soup or another salad I was going to cry. I blazed into the grocery store at 8 p.m. praying that they still had rotisserie chickens left. Lucky for me, they did and they not only on sale but marked down to $3.99…that’s a steal.

Chicken is pretty boring too. These cookies, however, are far from boring. In fact, they may be the best cookies that I have ever baked. And that is not an exaggeration. Those who have sampled are backing me up on this claim.

Butterscotch, pretzel and chocolate chip cookies. The combination is killer and the new chocolate chip cookie recipe I followed is perfection.

I can’t take credit for the cookie combination – Pinterest provided the inspiration. The recipe that I Pinned used Alton Brown’s “The Chewy” as the chocolate chip cookie base and while I have baked The Chewy many times and sing its praises, there was no way that I was waiting eight hours for these cookies to chill in the fridge before baking. I’m not sure why but they Pinned recipe called for eight hours in the fridge instead of Alton’s typical one hour. That was not happening. When a girl needs cookies, the situation cannot wait eight hours. There is just no way.

So I combined the flavor idea from Pinterest and a highly rated chocolate chip cookie recipe from All Recipes and what resulted was an addicting combination of salty pretzels and sweet butterscotch in a chocolate chip cookie that is chewy and soft in the middle and slightly crisp around the edges.

I took them to the gym and shared them with my yoga students and some of the staff. I gave some out to friends. I’m making another batch tonight to take to a party tomorrow. These cookies will make you popular. 😉

Butterscotch, Pretzel and Chocolate Chip Cookies
(Recipe combination inspired by Une Gamine dans la Cuisine, chocolate cookie recipe All Recipes)

Ingredients:

1 cup butter (2 sticks), softened
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, at room temp
2 teaspoons vanilla
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons hot water
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup butterscotch chips
1 cup broken pretzel pieces

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment or in a large bowl with a hand mixer, cream butter and sugars until lightened in color and fluffy. You’ll want your mixer at medium-high speed for this. Reduce the mixer speed to medium-low and add eggs one at a time and then add vanilla extract. Dissolve the baking soda in the hot water and add  baking soda mixture and salt to batter.

Keep the mixer on medium-low speed and add in the flour, one cup at a time. Once the flour is incorporated turn the mixer speed to the lowest setting and add in butterscotch chips, chocolate chips and finally the pretzels. Do not overmix. You don’t want to crush all of your pretzels.

Drop batter onto ungreased cookie sheets (your call on whether or not you want to use a Silpat mat or parchment paper) and bake for about 9-10 minutes or until cookies just start to look golden. They will appear underbaked when you take them out but they will set. Let cool on cookie sheets for about 5 minutes and then transfer to wire racks.

Yield: ab0ut 48 cookies

And now I’m off to make Paleo pizza bite stuffed mushrooms. Something different every day around here. 😀