If you make caramel, cookies will come.

I’ve never been a science person. In fact, I managed to make it through a liberal arts college without taking a single course in the subject. But when I make caramel sauce, I feel like a mad scientist—and I don’t hate it.

I use the “dry method” of making caramel, where I heat granulated sugar by itself until it caramelizes. It’s a littler riskier than the wet method (where butter, cream, or water is mixed in from the start) since it’s easier to burn the sugar, but watching the grains liquefy and then turn a deep amber color is like magic. As I hover over the stove, swirling the pot of sugar, I’m like a kid working on my science fair project. And when all the white crystals have disappeared into the simmering sea of gold and my kitchen is filled with the sweet scent of caramel, I feel like I took home first prize. #winning

But caramel sauce it pretty useless unless you have something to put it on. Enter, salted caramel chocolate chunk cookies.

I followed this recipe by Sweet Phi for the cookies, with a few tweaks. I added an extra quarter of a cup of caramel sauce to the batter and chopped up some dark chocolate bars I’d been saving in my fridge instead of using semi-sweet chips. When the cookies came out of the oven (I cooked them for 10 minutes), I tasted one (of course) and didn’t think there was enough caramel flavor, so I also drizzled some more caramel sauce over the cookies once they had cooled.

With that added drizzle of caramel, these cookies were everything a salted caramel chocolate chip cookie should be. Chewy, sweet, salty, and loaded with perfectly bitter dark chocolate—and they were super easy to make. What more could you want out of a cookie?

Happy Saturday, and happy baking!