Sweet and salty. It’s like the yin and yang of food — they just need each other to balance out your taste buds. Too much sugar, and although delightful, you can start feeling sick all too soon. Too much salt, and no number of water jugs will satiate your thirst.
The chocolate-covered pretzel famously employs both tastes, which made me wonder: Could a cookie provide the same blissful balance?
It took some tinkering with the traditional “compost cookie” recipe found on many sites, but I finally had my eureka treat: a mouth-watering blend of peanut butter cups, chocolate, pretzels and buttery cookie goodness.
Sweet & Salties: Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe
Utensils required: measuring cups, oven mitts, mixing bowl, electric mixer, oven, cookie sheet, spatula
Ingredients (makes 3 1/2 dozen cookies):
- 1 3/4 sticks of unsalted butter (told you it was buttery! Okay, maybe I didn’t, but I was thinking it as I typed the intro.)
- 2 eggs
- 1 cup sugar
- 3/4 cup brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 2 cups flour
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1 teaspoon soda
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
- 1 1/2 cups pretzels
Time commitment: 20 minutes to prepare, 1 hour to freeze, 10 minutes to cook (1 1/2 hours total)
Steps:
1. First, place the pretzels in a plastic bag and, using a spoon or meat tenderizer (AKA a mallet), smash those pretzels as small as you can get ’em without turning them all into dust.
2. Next, combine the butter and sugars until they reach a pale yellow hue.
3. Crack the eggs, remove the chalaza — those two white, stringy bits in the egg — and add in the vanilla.
4. Now it’s time to get M’Obama arms! Start your electric mixer on slow and work your way up to medium, stirring feverishly for 10 minutes. Can you feel the burn? (Unless you’re one of those lucky bums with a stand mixer … jealous!)
5. In a separate bowl, add the flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder, mixing them all together. Now add that to the egg and butter mixture, stirring them until all the ingredients are thoroughly combined.
6. As soon as you’re done, fold in the pretzels and chocolate, and toss that delightful-smelling dough into the freezer, where it’ll chill for one hour. (I know, I know, it’s a labor of love! And a test of endurance.)
7. Once the dough is free from its hour-long stay in solitary (freezer) confinement, preheat the oven for 400 degrees and begin rolling the dough into one-inch balls. Then, pop ’em in the oven for 9-11 minutes, or until they’re lightly golden.
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