Toffee Chocolate Chewy Cookies

It’s true: the Milk Chocolate Toasted Almond Toffee met a cookie and fell in love, and then crumbled itself into bits to become one with said cookie.
One cannot argue that the union isn’t a colossal success. (Especially since this cookie base uses melted browned butter, which is really one step away from toffee goodness in its own right… for real. If you haven’t fallen in love with browned butter yet, then prepare to fall hard, my friend.)

(Truth be told- I saved a bunch of toffee from my last batch and froze it with the purpose of adding it to my World’s Best Fudge Brownie, but then had to change my plan when I realized I had no sugar left in the house. How this is possible as an avid baker is beyond me— can I not manage to keep track of the most important ingredient in the pantry? The kitchen crack [a.k.a. White Sugar] is a staple of the Brownie, so I changed course since I happened to have a plethora of brown sugar. Brown sugar… toffee… cookies!)

(Second truth to be told- I thought that the toffee bits would actually look like toffee bits after baking the cookies. I had this romantic notion that the crumbly toffee pieces I painstakingly crumbled over the tops of the little buggers would remain in tact during baking, and that my effort would be apparent. Yeah well, not so much. The toffee melted [who knew?] and so it created a different kind of texture. Different, but delectable. If you buy the Heath or Skor bar and chop it up, the before and after bits will still look pretty much the same, because they are filled with lovely ingredients [preservatives] designed to allow bakers to show off, crumbly bits and all.)

Anyhoo, get baking- and watch the toffee melt into a sinful puddle along the edges of your cookies. It’s a showstopper, I tell ‘ya.

Adapted from Cook’s Illustrated chocolate chip cookie recipe…

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
14 tablespoons unsalted butter (1 + 3/4 sticks)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed dark brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk

1 1/2 cups crumbled Milk Chocolate & Toasted Almond Toffee bits (OR 1 cup Heath toffee bits plus 1 cup milk chocolate or semi-sweet chocolate chips)
1. Preheat oven to 375° and line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk flour with baking soda and salt, and set aside.
3. In a medium saucepan, melt butter over medium-high heat and continue cooking in pan, swirling every 30 seconds or so until dark golden brown (butter will initially foam, then spit, and then the clarified butter will begin to brown). Be careful not to burn; pull off heat after butter smells nicely toasted and caramelly. Transfer butter (and browned bits at bottom of the pan) to a large heatproof bowl.
4. Add white and dark brown sugars, salt, and vanilla to butter and beat for 30 seconds to incorporate. Add egg and egg yolk and beat for another 30 seconds. Allow batter to sit for about 10 minutes, beating for 30 seconds a few times throughout the waiting period.
5. Add flour mixture to dough, stirring until just combined. Add crumbled toffee bits and gently stir until incorporated.
6. Scoop heaping tablespoons full onto parchment paper, spacing dough balls 2″ apart from one another (ideally you’ll use a cookie scoop, which is way faster and creates dough balls that tend to bake in better shapes than when you wrestle with the dough using two spoons). Optional: sprinkle additional toffee bits on tops of cookie dough balls. Bake for about 9 minutes, until golden brown and still soft in the centers. Transfer to a cooling rack and allow to cool to a point where you won’t burn the roof of your mouth when you surely inhale several freshly baked cookies.
Tips:
- Hammering toffee bits is so much fun. Take the toffee and put it in a large ziploc bag… use a rubber mallet (or a rolling pin) and smash away. (Keep some pieces in tact, no larger than the size of your pinky nail. Just make sure you don’t pulverize the toffee to a fine dust.) I make toffee in a big batch and always freeze extra just for the purpose of using in cookies and brownies. Oh, and over ice cream. Don’t forget that application.
- No homemade super-awesome toffee? Don’t despair. (Well, despair a little bit, but then get over it.) Buy a few Heath or Skor chocolate bars, and hammer them. (The experts say Skor tastes the best, but you can’t get that bar easily in the U.S… bummer.) Or as indicated above, buy the Heath toffee bits and throw in your favorite chocolate chip (might I suggest Ghiradelli?). And if you feel you must deviate from the toffee theme, that’s okay- just throw in chocolate chips/chunks and toasted chopped nuts (pecans or walnuts are classics) and go to town.
- Why wait? It’s weird, I know- letting the batter sit for 10 minutes? Annoying at best. But the esteemed people from Cook’s Illustrated swear by it- they say it allows the sugar to sort of melt into the batter and create “crisp edges and toffee flavor”. Sounds good to me. (A word on Cook’s Illustrated: the magazine never used to appeal to me, as I wanted snazzy photos and fancy layouts and glossy paper. That was in my youth, and I have matured immensely since then [matured meant to be pronounced like “matoored” for full effect]. They really know their stuff- and they write about their quest for recipe perfection in a really cool, candid, incredibly well-researched way. So what if the photos are black and white and kind of shitty? So what if their graphic design skills are sort of sucky [pot calling the kettle black here]? I am really digging them these days. And these cookies are the real deal, so CI, you have a lifelong fan here.)
- Think BIGGER is better? There IS something enticing about massive cookies. Scoop about 1/4 cup of dough per cookie onto your parchment-lined baking sheet, smoosh a tod on top, and bake for 10 -1 4 minutes. Big cookies = happiness.
- Chewy… or crispy? Your call. Bake 1 – 2 minutes longer if you really want a toffee crunch. Keep as is (or underbake!) for a doughy chewy cookie.
- A word on the batter… it’s not your typical “take the raw cookie dough to the couch and eat most of the bowl” kind of dough. If that’s what you were looking for, then I’m really sorry. The melted butter just wrecks that whole plan, since it creates a totally different texture that won’t appeal to you in its rawness, BUT it’s totally worth it when the cookies come out of the oven. Trust me- browned butter is a VERY SPECIAL thing and very special things are worth waiting for. (Browned butter was used in my Zesty Ginger Scone with Raisins & Orange Glaze… bake it and you’ll see the difference.)
- Enjoy!
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June 16th, 2012 | More Sweets Please | No Comments | Tags: Chocolate, Cookies