Gooey Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

GOOEY SALTED CARAMEL CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE BARS

This recipe comes from The Cookies and Cups Cookbook: 125+ sweet & savory recipes reminding you to always eat dessert first by Shelly Jaronsky. If you love to bake, you need this one on your cookbook shelf!! Shelly has a very popular baking blog- CookiesAndCups.com… so it’s a natural transition for her to come out with a baking cookbook. Here are a few recipes I’ve tagged to make from this book: Vanilla Bean Snickerdoodles, Banana Bread Pancakes, Brown Sugar Cinnamon Swirl Bread, Pound Cake Cookies, Icy Lemon Cake, Hot Fudge Sundae Cake, Marshmallow Buttercream, Payday Pie, and Marble Sheet Cake. Shelly also includes a few dinner recipes in the final chapter of the book.  There’s a bit of flaked sea salt on top- which happens to be a very good idea. It gives these bars a little bit of a salty kick, and it balances out the sweet.
INGREDIENTS:

170 grs salted butter, at room temperature
170 grs light brown sugar
85 grs granulated white sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
450 grs all-purpose flour
250 grssemisweet chocolate chips
380 can sweetened condensed milk
120 grs soft caramels, unwrapped (about 20 pieces)
1 teaspoon flaked sea salt
DIRECTIONS:

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F. Line a 9x13-inch baking pan with foil and coat liberally with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, use an electric mixer to combine the butter and both sugars on medium speed for 2 minutes until fluffy.
Add the eggs, vanilla, salt and baking soda and continue mixing until smooth, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.
Turn the speed to low and add the flour until combined. Stir in the chocolate chips.
Press half the dough into the prepared pan.
In a medium saucepan, combine the condensed milk and caramels and cook over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until the caramels are melted.
Pour the caramel mixture on top of the dough in the pan and drop the remaining dough evenly in teaspoon-size amounts on top of the caramel.
Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, until the center is just set.
Sprinkle with flaked sea salt.
Allow to cool completely in the pan before cutting into bars.
Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days.