Giant Decadence in Giant Choc Chip Cookies Stuffed with Caramel and Topped with Ghirardelli Caramels!
With dark chocolate cookie dough, this may be one of the most decadent GIANT chocolate chip cookies you’ll ever enjoy. Imagine a soft caramel center in the dark chocolate cookie, and topped with one of the most delicious chocolate caramels around – Ghirardelli Dark, Milk or White Chocolates with soft dreamy chocolate centers.
Mom would have loved this chocolate chip cookie recipe. She made the Nestle Toll House recipe hundreds of times during her 82+ years, but never enjoyed these dark chocolate morsels until much later in life. She loved the dark chocolate! This recipe should be dedicated to her, she had such a huge love for chocolate…and caramels, too. Here's to you, Mom and all your wonderful baking abilities!
Make your dark chocolate cookie dough and add the dark chocolate chips. Then center your dough ball around a soft caramel of your favorite brand. When the cookies are baked, but still warm, add a Ghirardelli chocolate covered caramel on top. Try them while they’re warm! MMMM…mmmm…mmm!
This recipe makes 16 - 20 giant cookies, about 5" in diameter.
Prep your cookie sheets:
Spread a parchment paper liner on each pan.
Preheat the oven to 335F degrees.
Gather your Ingredients:
½ C Butter, soft
½ C Brown sugar
1 C Sugar
1 Egg
2 t Vanilla extract
¾ C Cocoa, unsweetened
1 C Flour
½ t Baking soda
1 t Cornstarch
1/8 t Salt
1 C Chocolate chips, semi-sweet or dark chocolate
16-20 Caramels, soft, for inserting in the dough balls
½ C Chocolate chips, semi-sweet or dark chocolate, for garnish
Mix the dough:
- With an electric stand mixer, beat the butter and sugars until creamy.
- Beat in the egg and flavoring until well combined. Set aside.
- Whisk all the dry ingredients (not the chips) together in a separate bowl.
- Add the dry ingredients to the wet mixture and beat slowly just until combined. Do not overbeat.
- Stir in 1 cup of the chocolate chips.
Scoop and bake:
- Scoop 2 tablespoons of cookie dough for the cookies, rolling each one.
- Flatten each dough ball and press a caramel into the middle of each one. Bring enough dough around the caramel to seal it in the middle of the cookie and flatten the ball a bit. You don’t want it to seep out during the baking process.
- Place the cookie dough balls on the parchment paper lined cookie sheets.
- Chill the dough one hour or overnight. If you’re chilling overnight be sure to place them into an airtight container so they do not dry out.
- Bake at 325F degrees for 10-11 minutes. I check the cookies at the 8-minute mark and rotate my pans since the oven does not bake evenly throughout.
- The cookies should not look wet.
- Take the cookies out of the oven, leaving them on the pans to set on top of the stove, leaving them for 5 minutes to bake further.
- While the cookies are still hot, top each with one Ghirardelli chocolate covered caramel. These caramels will melt into the cookie.
- Once the cookies have cooled, the chocolate caramel on top will probably remain soft, so I like to put them in the refrigerator for 10-20 minutes so the chocolate on top sets nicely.
Freeze the cookie dough and bake later:
- Freezing the dough ahead gives you fresh cookies whenever you want to enjoy them. I have found that frozen dough balls baked later are much fresher tasting than frozen cookies. I like to mix the dough and bake the cookies later, like maybe a day, week or even a month later.
- In that case, I freeze the dough balls close together, but not touching, on a cookie sheet.
- Then place them into an airtight container and place in the freezer. If you want something that takes up less space than a covered pan, place the frozen dough balls into a sealable plastic bag.
- I always label the cookie dough balls with the name of the cookies, baking temp and baking time.
- Whenever we’re in the mood, I can grab a few dough balls out of the freezer, let them thaw 20 minutes on a cookie sheet and bake at the same temp and time as above. I can add the caramel centers just before I bake them.
These cookies are so delicious, and easy to make. They can be changed up with different flavored centers – chocolate covered mints, chocolate covered dried cherries, chocolate covered dried blueberries. Try some different flavors and “Bake your own Memories!”