Copycat Outback Steakhouse Salted Caramel Cookie Recipe

Some may vote for Outback Steakhouse's Chocolate Thunder from Down Under as one of the best desserts from a steakhouse chain, but many others would argue that the restaurant's salted caramel cookie skillet also deserves that honor. (Still others would order both items and make a mashup mug cake.) Developer Patterson Watkins admits she's never actually has room for any of Outback's desserts since the Bloomin' Onion is not only delicious but pretty darn filling. Instead, she came up with this recipe so she could enjoy the salted caramel cookie skillet at home as it's meant to be eaten: warm, gooey, and fresh from the oven.

Watkins even one-ups Outback by making her skillet cookie into a shareable version that serves six. Since the cookie is fully loaded with nuts, pretzels, toffee, and white chocolate chips and topped off with vanilla ice cream and salted caramel sauce, she says "It sounds like a lot," but adds, "It works together so well." Everyone she invited to share the dessert with her seems to have concurred with her declaration that "This is a damn good cookie!"

The cookie dough is made from flour, baking soda, salt, butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar, eggs, and vanilla, with mix-ins including white chocolate chips, crushed chocolate toffee bar, crushed pretzels, and slivered almonds. To serve the skillet cookie à la Outback, you'll also need vanilla ice cream, caramel sauce, and flaky sea salt for topping.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Spritz a medium cast iron skillet with cooking spray.

Place the flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. Whisk to combine the dry ingredients.

Place the butter, granulated sugar, and brown sugar in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment.

Mix until fluffy and combined.

Add the eggs and vanilla to the bowl and mix until combined.

Add the dry ingredients to the bowl with the wet and mix until the cookie dough is smooth and thoroughly combined.

Add the white chocolate chips, toffee, pretzels, and almonds to the bowl and mix on low speed until nicely distributed.

Scoop the dough into the prepared skillet and spread it out evenly. 

Place the skillet in the oven and bake for 30 minutes, or until the cookie is firm around the edges of the skillet but a little soft and squishy in the center.

Remove from the oven and set aside to rest for 10 minutes.

Once rested, top the cookie with scoops of vanilla ice cream.

Drizzle the ice cream and the cookie with caramel sauce and sprinkle with flaky sea salt before serving. Serve while the cookie is still warm.

Can you still make this cookie if you don't have five people to share it with? You could, of course, eat one slice while it's still warm and refrigerate the leftovers, since the cookie would still be delicious cold. A better idea, however, might be to divide the dough into smaller portions and then refrigerate them for up to five days or freeze them for several months. That way, you can bake one or more smaller skillet cookies any time you want them and still enjoy that fresh-from-the-oven flavor. Plus, you won't need to do any of the dough division necessary to make a smaller batch, like determining ⅙ of 2 ¼ cups flour or figuring out how to measure ⅓ egg.

The six-serving cookie is baked in a 10-inch skillet, so a six-inch skillet could make a cookie for two. For a single serving, a four-inch mini skillet might be ideal (a set of four Hiceeden four-inch frying pans from Amazon will set you back just $19.99). For three people, you could do one of each, while two six-inch (or four four-inch) pans should cover a quartet. If you don't have smaller skillets, you could also use ramekins or large muffin pans, but be careful to fill these only halfway since the dough will puff up as it bakes. The baking time, too, will also need to be adjusted. A six-inch skillet cookie could need 18 to 20 minutes in the oven, while single-serving-sized ones might be done in about 10 minutes.

This cookie may be a near clone of the one served by Outback Steakhouse, but making it at home means you get to call the shots. While the super-sugary white chocolate chips are offset to an extent by the saltiness of the pretzels, you could go with bittersweet, semisweet, or even milk chocolate to dial back a bit on the sweetness. You could also use a different kind of nuts, such as pecans, pistachios, or walnuts if you prefer those to almonds. Yet another idea, especially if you'll be making these cookies in early November, is to replace either the chips or crushed toffee bar (or both) with chopped-up Twix, Kit Kats, Nestle Crunch bars, Hershey minis, or any other chocolate leftover from Halloween. 

Besides changing up the mix-ins, you could also make a different kind of cookie. This same skillet concept would work with snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, peanut butter cookies, oatmeal cookies, chocolate chip cookies, or any other cookies made with eggs and butter. These two ingredients in combination help to keep the dough soft and squishy, resulting in a cookie you can eat with a spoon.