Dark Chocolate Cookies with Salted Caramel filling

Upon making a caramel tart with dark chocolate ganache finished with sea salt for a coworker's birthday, I suddenly found myself commissioned to make two more for another coworker. Because I only have 11-inch tart pans (as to why, well, I explain by saying "but these go to 11!") I had to make one and a half times each tart recipe. This required math skills, but perhaps contradictory to what people may think about me, I did my math correctly and the tarts turned out perfectly. Because I was making two 11 inch tarts, I had an excess of tart dough so I decided to put it to good use and bring in some cookies to the hovering coworkers, wishing they had access to the delicious tarts. I hear these ended up being delicious (I didn't make them gluten-free but I know they would work out well substituted with a gf flour blend). I also made pistachio filled cookies as well, since i soon ran out of caramel, but I'll put those in a separate entry.

Dark Chocolate Cookies with Salted Caramel Filling

1 1⁄2 cups flour (make it gluten-free with a gf baking blend)

1⁄4 cup plus 1 tbsp. dutch-process unsweetened
cocoa powder
1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt
10 tbsp. unsalted butter, cubed and softened
1⁄2 cup plus 2 tbsp. confectioners' sugar
2 egg yolks, preferably at room temperature
1⁄2 tsp. vanilla extract

FOR THE CARAMEL FILLING
1 1⁄2 cups sugar
3 tbsp. light corn syrup
1⁄4 tsp. kosher salt
6 tbsp. unsalted butter
6 tbsp. heavy cream
1 tbsp. crème fraîche or full fat sour cream

FOR THE CHOCOLATE TOPPING

4 oz. melted chocolate

pastry bag (or ziploc bag with tiny corner cut off)

sea salt

Heat oven to 350˚. Combine flour, cocoa powder, and salt in a medium bowl and set aside. Using a mixer, cream the butter and sugar in a large bowl until mixture is pale and fluffy; mix in yolks and vanilla. Mix in dry ingredients. Separate the dough into three balls, and roll out between two sheets of parchment paper. Place on baking sheets. Refrigerate for 20 minutes. Cut into 1.5"-2" rounds. Bake for 5-7 minutes (depending on the size of your cookies). Cool on a wire rack.

Make the caramel: Combine heavy cream and creme friache or sour cream in a small bowl. Set aside. Whisk the sugar and corn syrup with 6 Tbsp. of water and bring to a boil. Boil for 3-4 minutes. Stir and boil hard for 5-6 more minutes until medium amber. Remove from heat and whisk in butter and heavy cream mixture. Let cool slightly.

Assemble the cookies: Spread desired amount of caramel on one cookie half. Place another cookie on top. Set on a baking sheet prepared with parchment paper. Repeat with all cookie halves. Melt chocolate in microwave and place in pastry bag. Drizzle over cookies. Let set slightly, and sprinkle with sea salt. Place in refrigerator to set completely.