Dessert · Makes 18
Chunky Reggie! Bar Cookies
A chocolate chip cookie is a fine thing. This one is greedier. Instead of chips, you fold chopped candy bar through a soft brown-sugar dough, so every cookie hides pockets of milk chocolate, chewy caramel and roasted peanut. The caramel does something a chip never will: it goes molten in the oven, then cools into soft, taffy-like ribbons inside the crumb. Bite in warm and you get a little pull. Let them cool and the caramel sets into chewy veins.
The base is a standard drop-cookie dough, nothing fancy, built to show off the mix-ins. You'll chop three Reggie! Bars for a batch of about eighteen. Keep the pieces on the larger side, roughly the size of a chocolate chunk, so they hold their shape and give you those messy, gooey centers. Save a small handful to press on top before baking. Those are the pieces that catch the eye when the cookies come out.
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups (280 g) all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 3/4 teaspoon fine salt
- 1 cup (226 g) unsalted butter, softened
- 3/4 cup (150 g) packed light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup (100 g) granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
- 3 Reggie! Bars (1.8 oz each), chilled and chopped into chunks
- 1/2 cup (about 60 g) roasted salted peanuts, chopped (optional, for extra crunch)
- Flaky sea salt, for topping
Instructions
- Mix the dry ingredients. Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together in a bowl and set it aside. Getting the leavening evenly through the flour now saves you from overmixing later.
- Cream the butter and sugars. In a large bowl, beat the softened butter with both sugars for 3 to 4 minutes, until the mixture is pale and fluffy. This step traps the air that keeps the cookies from baking dense, so don't rush it.
- Add eggs and vanilla. Beat in the eggs one at a time, letting each one blend in fully, then add the vanilla. Scrape down the sides of the bowl so nothing hides at the bottom.
- Bring in the flour. Add the dry mix and stir on low speed just until the flour disappears. Overworked dough makes tough cookies, so stop as soon as you don't see dry streaks.
- Fold in the bar. Chop the chilled bars into chunks and fold them in by hand along with the peanuts, keeping back a small handful of chunks for the tops. A cold bar chops cleaner, so chill it well before you start.
- Rest and heat the oven. Let the dough sit 15 to 20 minutes while the oven comes up to 350°F (175°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment. The short rest lets the flour hydrate and helps the cookies spread evenly.
- Scoop and top. Scoop 2-tablespoon mounds onto the sheets, about 2 inches apart so they have room to spread. Press a couple of the reserved chunks onto each mound so the tops look loaded.
- Bake. Bake 11 to 13 minutes, until the edges are set and lightly golden but the centers still look soft and a touch underdone. They finish cooking on the hot sheet.
- Cool. Sprinkle with flaky salt right away. Let the cookies sit on the sheet for 5 minutes so the caramel firms up enough to lift them, then move them to a rack.
Handle the hot caramel with care. Straight from the oven, the exposed caramel pieces are very hot and sticky, more like molten sugar than melted chocolate. Give the cookies their full 5 minutes on the sheet before you pick one up. That wait is the hardest part of the whole recipe.
These freeze well two ways. You can freeze the baked cookies in a bag for up to two months and warm them for ten seconds to bring the caramel back. Or scoop the raw dough into balls, freeze them solid, and bake straight from the freezer with an extra minute or two on the timer. That second method means a fresh, warm cookie any night you want one, without mixing a whole batch. Store the baked cookies in an airtight container at room temperature and they'll stay chewy for about four days.
Good to know before you bake. These cookies contain milk, peanuts, soy, egg and wheat from the dough and the bars, plus the added peanuts. Reggie! Bars are also made in a facility that processes almond, cashew, pecan and coconut. They are not allergen-free. If you're baking for a bake sale or a classroom, label them clearly so anyone with an allergy can steer clear.
Want them bakery-sized? Scoop in 1/4-cup mounds instead, space them farther apart, and add two or three minutes to the bake. You'll get fewer cookies, but each one turns into a proper crackly-edged, soft-centered showpiece with candy pooling in the middle.
Made with The REGGIE! Bar. A batch takes three bars, so a box keeps you in cookies all season.