Pretzel & Butterscotch Chocolate-chip Cookies

I sponsored a blood drive today at work, so I brought cookies for the donors.  Chocolate chip cookies are about as close to "American comfort food" as you'll find, but these have a fun difference -- they contain pretzels, browned butter, and bread flour!  (They are an alteration of Alton Brown's The Chewy.)

Blood donors are encouraged to eat salty snacks after donating.  Between the pretzels and the little bit of kosher salt sprinkled on top, I thought these would be a good snack choice.  In addition, the pretzels provide a nice crunch that you normally get from nuts, but since so many people have nut allergies I didn't want to bring anything with nuts.

Midway through smooshing the dough balls.

I missed the part of the recipe that called for a rounded tablespoon of dough for each cookie -- I used a cookie scoop that was about a level tablespoon.  That would explain why I ended up with 66 cookies!

Although to get the stated yield, you'd have to use 3 tablespoons of dough for each cookie.  That's a BIG cookie.

A light sprinkling of kosher salt adds a nice flavor contrast.

Also, they baked up hard and crunchy rather than chewy, probably due to the smaller size.  They were still delicious, though!  The browned butter gave them a flavor that reminded me of a toasted marshmallow.

Delicious!

Conclusion:  Sweet and salty -- a great combination.  For a chewy cookie, I guess they need to be much larger.  At a smaller size, they come out crunchy when cooked as directed, so an adjustment would have to be made to the time and/or temperature.   Overall, though, a very good cookie (and I prefer this smaller size.)

Recipe:  Pretzel-Scotch Cookies via une gamine dans la cuisine