Christmas Cookie #7: Caramel Meltaways

This is a really simple and delicious recipe that starts with a boxed cake mix, but tastes and looks like it is much more difficult to make.

These chocolate cookies appear from the outside to be a simple chocolate cookie, but hiding inside is a sweet, gooey caramel.

Serve these cookies warm if you want the caramel to ooze from the middle. As they cool, the caramel hardens. I liked them both ways.

We have been laughing all day because Jack will eat the chocolate cookie all the way around the caramel, and then leave the caramel sitting on the table - which Max promptly finds and devours. How on earth did I birth a child who doesn't like caramel?

Our lesson: Sometimes things aren't as they seem on the outside. Baby Jesus looked like a tiny, little baby, but He was King of the whole world!

Caramel Meltaways
my own recipe...

One 18.25 ounce box chocolate cake mix
3 tablespoons flour
1 stick butter, softened
1 egg
3 tablespoons water
18 caramels, unwrapped
1/2 cup flour

Combine first five ingredients and beat with electric mixer until well combined.

Pour 1/2 cup flour into a small bowl. Dip fingers in flour to keep dough from sticking to hands. Form dough into 2-inch balls. Flatten out dough with fingers and place a caramel onto the dough. Fold dough around caramel until caramel is surrounded entirely by dough. (You'll have a round ball of dough with a caramel in the middle. Be sure caramel is surrounded on all sides.)

Place onto ungreased cookie sheets and bake at 350 degrees for 12 minutes. Allow to rest on cookie sheet for 2 minutes before moving to cooling rack.

Serve warm or cool.