Grandma’s Favorite Caramel Salted Chocolate Chip Cookies

This past year, The Big E hosted a series of national and local cooking contests in which participants entered their original recipes in hopes to win the grand prize. The national cooking contests featured at the 2013 Big E included Gold Medal Flour Scratch Bakers Cookie Challenge, Fleischmann's Yeast Best Baking Contest and Bisquick Family Favorites Recipe Contest. In addition, the two local contests were Domino Sugar Cake Decorating Contest and Domino Sugar Cupcake Contest.

Sad you missed out? Well, you’re in luck! These winning recipes are too good to keep to ourselves, so we are going to share them with you!

Grandma’s Favorite Caramel Salted Chocolate Chip Cookie

Gold Medal Flour Scratch Bakers Cookie Challenge 1st place recipe submitted by Frances Tessier of East Hartford, Conn. 

1 stick butter

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 eggs

2 1/2 cups Gold Medal All-Purpose Flour

1 teaspoon Kosher salt (plus additional for sprinkling)

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 bag chocolate chips

2 – 3 caramello bars

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare a nonstick cookie sheet.

In a large bowl, mix the butter and sugar together until creamy. Add the vanilla and eggs and mix until well blended.

In a separate bowl, blend together the Gold Medal all-purpose flour, salt and baking soda. Add dry ingredients to the wet and mix thoroughly. Add 1 bag chocolate chips to dough and mix.

Scoop a small spoon of dough onto the prepared cookie sheet. Add a caramello square to the center of each dough ball. Next, cover the caramello square with more cookie dough and push down and around to seal. Sprinkle kosher salt on top of the cookie dough and bake for about 10 minutes until done.

Yields: approximately 12 cookies