Witch of the Woods Cookies

 

Go ahead and take a bite, these creepy cookies will fill your sweetest dreams to the brim with fright! The idea came to me while I was craving the double chocolate chip cookies I made for Mr. Fox and I’s wedding last year. What could possibly make those better? 

Witchcraft. 

And caramel... and pretzels... 

And I had to make them spookier! A Spookie if you will. 

Thus, the Witch of the Woods cookies were born. 

I recommend baking the cookies ahead of time, so they have a chance to cool before adding your pretzel sigils. This vegan caramel sauce can be a bit temperamental, so it saved my sanity to prepare the cookies the night before. We want to enjoy our kitchen witchery, right? 

For this Halloween-y treat, I took one of my favorite cookie recipes (a recipe by Tutti Dolci was the inspiration) that I’ve modified to be plant-based. It took some adjustments to make the dough work with the flax eggs, but they came out perfect. The caramel sauce is a great one by Nora Cooks, I highly recommend checking out her blog and following her directions. I tweaked it just a little bit and then went a bit rogue on the caramel, as you’ll see. As always, if you have food allergies like my daughter, check your ingredients for exposure to those allergens. Especially for snacks like pretzels. 

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Salted Caramel Sauce 

• 1 cup granulated sugar 
• 6 tbsp plant-based butter 
• ½ cup barista style or extra creamy oat milk 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1/3 cup water  

Sigils 

• Pretzel sticks (small) 

Double Chocolate Chip Cookies 

1. Preheat your oven to 350°F and line a couple of baking trays with parchment paper. 
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. 
3. In a microwave-safe bowl, heat the butter and chocolate chips on high for 30 seconds. Stir and heat again for 15 second increments until it’s completely melted together. This process shouldn’t exceed 90 seconds. 
4. In another mixing bowl, combine the sugar, flax eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla. Whisk until it almost doubles in volume and then add the warm chocolate you just melted down. Mix for another 30 seconds until it’s just combined.  
5. Fold in the flour mixture with a spatula until there’s no more streaks and you’ll be left with a thick dough. Let stand for 5 minutes before folding in the rest of the chocolate chips. 
6. I used an ice-cream scooper to spoon the dough into neat balls about 2 inches apart on each baking tray. I pressed them down slightly. You can add extra chocolate chips on top at this point if you choose to do so.  This recipe should yield about 22 cookies.
7. Bake for about 10 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through cooking. The tops will get that lovely, crackly layer that brownies have. If you do choose to add salt now, I’d recommend against making a salted caramel sauce for the cookies you do this to. Otherwise, they’re ready to enjoy as is! They should cool after about 10 minutes. 

Caramel Sauce 

1. Add your sugar and water to a medium saucepan on medium heat. Keep stirring until it dissolves. 

2. Add the butter one tablespoon at a time until it’s all melted in. Be very careful when handling melted sugar, little ones should probably sit this part out!

 

3. Slowly and carefully pour the oat milk in and stir until just combined. Let it boil for a minute without any stirring. This next part is a waiting game of watching the bubbles turn a darker gold, orange, and eventually brown. You can occasionally stir, I recommend keeping a wooden spoon across the top to prevent bubbling over. Adjust the heat as you need if it starts to rise too much.

 

4. Once your caramel has reached the color you’re pleased with, remove from heat and stir in the little bit of salt. The vegan butter I used is quite salty so if you use an unsalted one you might want to double the salt.

  

Assembling your Witch of the Woods Cookies 

1. Take your cooled double chocolate chip cookies and lay them on whatever plates or platters you’d like to serve them on. I poured some pretzel sticks into a small bowl and broke them into varying lengths. Lay out the designs on each cookie that you’d like them to have. 
2. Work one cookie at a time so that the caramel doesn’t dry too quickly and you don’t lose track of your design. Using a spoon, drizzle your caramel sauce over the cookie liberally and swiftly. 
3. Immediately begin arranging the pretzel sticks in the caramel sauce, pressing gently to make sure each stick is secure. Let them set and they’re ready to share! I made pentacles, the Twana from the Blair Witch Project, and some runes. Pictured are ALGIZ and FEHU, the runes of protection and abundance respectively.

As I stated before, the Nora Cooks method might turn out better for your caramel sauce. There’s a wet and a dry method to making caramel, while the dry method can be a bit more nerve wracking, the wet method took longer for me and I’m not sure I was completely satisfied with the consistency. It hardened fast so I had to work very quickly as I decorated. A fair warning, these cookies are extremely addictive. They might actually contain some sort of magic.  

 

Be careful what sort of treats you eat this time of year, not all Witches in the woods are as nice as this one. 

Thank you for joining me in the Hollow for this recipe, 

Sara Fox