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1
Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Pour the milk into a pie plate, stir in 1/4 teaspooon kosher salt, and cover it tightly with foil. Put the pie plate in a big roasting pan, and fill the pan halfway up the pie plate with hot water. Bake for 1 to 1 1/4 hours, adding more water if necessary. Let cool, then whisk until smooth.
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2
Meanwhile, make the cookies.Set the oven at 350 degrees. The butter has to be room temp for this to work well, so what I did was set the butter out first thing in the morning, make the caramel, then about 15 minutes before that was done, I made the cookies.
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3
Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer. Add the vanilla. Mix the salt with the flour, then add the dry ingredients a little at a time and mix until the dough comes together. I formed the dough into square logs (though you can make it into a plate shape and roll it out; I just hate doing cut-out cookies). Wrap in plastic wrap and refrigerate 30 minutes.
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4
Slice or cut the dough into 1/4 to 1/2 inch thick cookies (mine were like 1/3 an inch). They don't spread much, so you can get quite a few on an ungreased cookie sheet. Sprinkle with reserved sugar.
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5
Bake for 20-24 minutes, switching the cookie sheets halfway through to get even cooking. Keep an eye on them because they go from perfect to burned fast.
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6
Put wax paper under your cooling rack. Remove cookies from the oven, place on the cooling racks. Heat the caramel for 30 seconds in the microwave, then put it in a Ziploc bag and snip one end (to make a homemade pastry bag). Drizzle cookies with caramel, then sprinkle with kosher salt.
