Snickersy Cookies

But not using actual Snickers bars. Oh no, because that would be too easy...

So a few evenings ago, Husband was sniffing about for cookies. I said "we have Tim Tams." He considered this briefly, and said "Do we have anything homemade?" Meaning he would rather have my baking than Tim Tams. Really.

Do you see why I love him?

Anyway, I said no, but indicated that I might bake some in the next day or two, and did he have any preferences. He said vaguely "I like Snickersy cookies." I indicated that I had no idea what he was talking about. But I really liked the idea.

Now I'm fully aware that I am a Very Long Way from being the first person to try this idea. But I made the conscious decision this time not to look at the internet*. No. I would make up my own Snickers cookie recipe. So here it is.

*(except the caramel)

Snickersy Cookies

Ingredients
250g Plain flour
130g Self Raising flour
1/4 tsp baking soda
3/4 cup melted butter
1 cup brown sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
2 Tbsp peanut butter
1 egg
1 egg yolk

1 quantity of this caramel recipe. The people at http://www.candybarlab.com/ describe this as "the type of caramel you'd find in Twix or Snickers", and they clearly know what they're talking about - it's Exactly What You Want for anything involving soft gooey caramel. Yum. After you've made it, refrigerate it - you want it cold for this recipe.

Enough salted roasted peanuts for about three or four whole nuts to each cookie.
200g dark chocolate (or milk chocolate I guess, if you're that way inclined. I always prefer dark.)

Modus Operandi

Cream butter and sugar. Add peanut butter, vanilla and eggs, and beat until creamy. Sift the dry ingredients in and mix until it comes together as a dough.
Roll into balls (about 1/8 of a cup of mixture each), and place onto a lined cookie tray. Next, make a very heavy impression into each cookie. This needs to be quite vicious - they will almost look like donuts, stopping just short of having an actual hole. Like this:

The cookies will flatten out a lot in the oven, so after baking, each cookie will be left with a large-diameter but very subtle dent in the top (which of course I forgot to take a photo of. Sorry).
Bake cookies at 165 degrees Celsius, for around 20 minutes.

Once cookies are completely cool, get your caramel out of the fridge. Dig a piece out with a spoon (probably just under a tablespoon - I didn't measure - but basically whatever amount is going to fit comfortably into the slight impression on the top of your cookie). Squish it into the impression on the top of one of the cookies, and press 3 or 4 whole peanuts (or 6-8 halves) into the caramel. Repeat with remaining cookies.
Finally, melt your chocolate, spoon it into a disposable piping bag or ziploc bag, snip the corner off and drizzle the chocolate over each cookie. Alternatively, you can just dip each cookie's top into the chocolate, covering the caramel and nuts completely. This gives a higher chocolate-to-cookie ratio. Both ways are good, but I prefer the look of the drizzled ones.

If it is warm where you live, you will probably need to set these (and store them) in the fridge. Although Husband would like me to point out that he believes they taste better at room temperature. He's probably right. At room temperature they do this:

Seriously, how cool is this caramel???

And to be honest, if they last longer than a couple of days at your place, then you have More Willpower Than Us...

Note: The cookie part itself is not very sweet on its own. This was deliberate on my part, as I was about to add a big lump of caramel onto the top. So if you taste one before you top it, don't be alarmed. If you like caramel, or chocolate, or peanuts, or (especially) grisly combinations of all three, then I'm sure you will like these.

I only wish there were some left...