White Chocolate, Salted Caramel Fudge Chip Cookies

I don't know if you know but I am a huge fan of baking on a budget.

I think yeah, it's super that some weeks your budget extends to all the finest of ingredients and you can throw gold leaf 'round like it's no big thing, but some weeks.. the budget be non existent. You feel me??

So what do you do when you want to bake something yummy, but your monies say nah-ah, no way..

You bake on a budget of course!!

I spotted Salted Caramel Fudge pieces walking through Aldi last week and genuinely melted at the thoughts of them. Seriously, you know that dessert face everyone makes when they spoon something into their mouths that actually blows their minds.. yeah that happened right there in the aisle. But clearly it had happened to everyone else also because there was only two packets left!! Needless to say I picked up the two and decided, coupled with some white chocolate chips that were also on the same shelf, they would make some bad-ass cookies.

And I was right.

Still have the dessert face too.

White Chocolate, Salted Caramel Fudge 

Chip Cookies

makes 36 cookies... you could half the recipe for half the fun I guess but I don't know why.. just make the 36!! 

Except for the vanilla and the shortening, everything I used was Aldi own brand baking ingredients and they were perfect. 

115g soft, salted butter
95g 100% vegetable fat or shortening
200g dark brown sugar
220g soft brown sugar
2 large free range eggs
2 tsp vanilla
465g self raising flour
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
2 bags of white chocolate chips
1 bag of salted caramel fudge pieces

Preheat the oven to 180C/350F or Gas mark 4. Line your cookie sheets with some parchment.

Beat the sugars, butter and shortening together until it looks like mashed up breadcrumbs.
Add both the eggs and then the vanilla and mix until fully incorporated.
Dry whisk the flour, baking powder and bicarb of soda together and then add to the wet mix. Mix until just together.

Add the chocolate chips and fudge pieces and mix until it's a soft dough consistency. This mix is not sticky, but more like really soft playdoh.

Using a tablespoon, scoop out the dough and roll them into golf ball sized balls. So.. being the way I am... I weigh these out to be about 40g balls (give or take a gram on either side.) If you think I'm going to pick off a gram or add a gram, you damn near lost yo' mind!

 Space them out on your trays as they spread...

Cook for 10-12 minutes, depending on how crisp you want them to be. 10 in my oven is crispy on the outside and soft and chewy in the inside. Yum!

Try leave them on the sheet to cool for at least 15 minutes. Which let's face it never happens.. Just be careful when they come out. They are hot.

The fudge-y pieces melt in the oven and make this chew-chewiness in the cookie that ohmygod yes... is amazing. Some of them stayed intact so there was this coupling of gooey chewy with soft salted caramel fudgeness that just.. oh my.. the face... you see the face!!! The brown sugars add this dark caramel flavour that just makes them richer than your regular chocolate chip cookie and the white chocolate adds another flavour, just because you know... there's not enough going on here!!

Pretty much all I am going to say on these is make them... eat them. Oh and well done Aldi*!

*I wasn't asked to endorse any of Aldi's products. All the opinions expressed are my own and I have not been paid or sponsored to do this post. This is not a review, more of a look-what-I-did (points to delicious cookies) while saving some pennies and it paid off. Kind of a for your information post, if you like. It's sharing a bargain while baking on a budget. What's not to love!