Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies

 

Right?!  Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies!  Omg.  Don't these sound grand?! 

Looking through my recipe stash, trying to figure out what to share this week and man, I'll tell ya, some days I just want to toss life aside and bake everything in my recipe collection.  Which, heh, would be an awful lot of baking.  An awful lot.

I have so many recipes I want to try and it never feels like enough time to get to them.  Sigh, alas...sigh.

(Too, where the hell does all the time go anyway?!  I swear....)

But eh, neither here nor there, whatev's.  We have more important matters to address today:  Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Growing up, I've always loved chocolate covered pretzels.  The combo of the sweet, rich chocolate with the salty crunch of a pretzel...mmm.

That salty sweet combo nails me every time.  Like, ok, gonna gross some of you out here and some of you are gonna be nodding in borderline ashamed agreement, like dipping french fries in a Wendy's Frosty.  Whoo, a little bead of sweat appeared on my forehead.

Whenever I had a chance, I'd swing by the Long Grove Confectionary and get their chocolate dipped pretzel rods.  Always always always got one if not two.  Hey, had to save room for their turtle candies too.

And in finding you the confectionary's link, I just discovered a factory outlet store is supposedly within easy driving distance.  I don't know if that's good news or bad news.  Huh.               Huh.

Anywhooo.

I loved their chocolate covered pretzels.

Weirdly, I have never thought to make them myself.  I have zero idea why because truly, there's not much easier as I found out recently during a baking class with Sous Chef where I added chocolate covered pretzels to the Blueberry Cheesecake Pie in lieu of blueberries.

It makes excellent sense.  Trust me.

Super fantastic Jackie, the mastermind of Sous Chef, and I were, I think, a little frightened at how easy in fact.  Like too easy, if you catch my drift.  By the way, you should subscribe to Sous Chef so that you can bake with me live.

Back to the cookies...Why not throw some pretzels into a chocolate chip cookie and make Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies?  Yeah.  Duh.  Obvs.

Ingredient prep.

Now note, the original recipe called for a cup and a half of pretzels which I felt was not enough and two cups of chocolate chips which I felt was too much, hence the quantities in the recipe below.  Meaning, you can play around with the pretzel and chip amounts to your liking.

And bonus!  When you have leftover chocolate chips, you make Hot Fudge.  Win freakin' win.

The original also calls for melted and browned butter.  I did a test with creaming room temp butter and while both versions are delicious, if you want cakier, puffier cookies, go with room temp butter and creaming.  If you want cookies with more goo and maybe more spread, do the melted butter.

Test batch baked up using creamed butter instead of melted.

I know, lot o' options.  Point being, as I'm always trying to point out, baking is more flexible than people assume!

For the melted butter version, melt it and brown it so there's that brown butter thing going on in there.  Personally, I have a hard time detecting brown butter versus un-browned in a baked good, but I'm a weirdo and seemingly weirdly the only one.

Am I truly the only one who can't tell the difference?

If you go creaming, cream the butter and brown sugar together, or, just mix the browned melted with the sugar in a mixer.*
 

Everything from here is the same.

Drop in the eggs one at a time while the mixer is running, whirl those about with the vanilla, then add those dry ingredients. 

Now, only mix a few seconds as you want to avoid overmixing.

Lastly, drop in your pretzels and chips.  You can use the mixer to blend but I like to do this by hand with a spatula* so the pretzels don't crack up into too small bits where they become unnoticeable.
 

To make my life easier, I have a two tablespoon measuring spoon* (or you could get a two tablespoon cookie scoop* which is way less messy) but otherwise scoop two tablespoons of dough together and plop them on a lined baking sheet.*  Either parchment paper* or a silicone mat* work just fine.

Optionally, stick a whole mini pretzel on top which is definitely for Instagram but also drives that crunchy saltly pretzel business home further.

Then, bake them up!  Keep a slight eye on them around when the time is near up so you can get the right amount of browning without going too far.

And that is it, my friends!  Crunchy.  Salty.  Gooey.  Chewy.  Chocolaty.  Pretzel Chocolate Chip Cookies!  Hot damn, yum!

Happy baking!  Happy baking indeed...mmfff mfff as I stuff a cookie in my face.....

*The stand mixers, spatulas, 2 tablespoon measuring spoons, 2 tablespoon cookie scoops, baking sheets, parchment paper, and silicone baking mats are Amazon affiliate links.  Happy baking, thanks!  Please see the "info" tab for more, well, info.