Ingredients
Directions
*To make hazelnut butter, toast hazelnut and turn into paste using a food processing. Cream butter, cream cheese and salt. Add hazelnut butter and the 3 sugars. Add the egg and the flour mixed with baking soda. Add the crushed hazelnuts. Scoop out cookie dough into 1.7 ounces/50g portions and chill. Cookie dough can be made days in advance and kept refrigerated for up to a week or frozen for months.
Heat up cream, milk, corn syrup, vanilla and salt. In the mean time, make brown caramel with sugar and corn syrup. Turn heat off and carefully pour hot liquid in the caramel whisking constantly, mix in chocolate and cool to 160ºF/70ºC. Add butter and blend. Use at room temperature or chill for later use; it can be kept refrigerated for weeks.
Cook sugar and water to 244ºF/118ºC or for 5 min. Throw in pecans and salt and stir constantly on medium high heat. Soon the sugar is going to crystalized – continue stirring for 15 minutes or until the nuts are completely caramelized. Cool onto a silicone mat.
Use 40% of the caramelized pecans for the praliné spread and save remaining for the topping.
Preheat oven to 350ºF/180ºC. Arrange chilled cookies onto 2 baking trays lined with silicone mat. Bake one tray at the time. Flatten cookies a bit, incrust some caramelized pecans in each cookie. Bake for 12 min (10 min if using convection oven). Remove pre-baked cookies from the oven and fill each cookie with 3 hazelnut size dots of pecan praliné – bake again for 8 min more. Do not over bake. Top baked cookies with more praliné and the salted chocolate caramel. Garnish with more caramelized pecans. Serve salted chocolate caramel pecan cookies at room temperature – Enjoy!