A little Easter break from our regularly scheduled programming. 🐣🐰

Like many Americans, I am spending more time in the kitchen now and if the baking aisle of the grocery store is any indication we are all doing a LOT of baking. Since my children were little, I have been making cookies from scratch and over the past 40 years my recipe has evolved to this - my signature Chocolate Chunk Toffee Walnut Cookie.

My son played a lot of baseball in his school years and early on, I appointed myself the team dietician. Chocolate chip cookies were the treat of choice and it became a thing after every game.

I thought that I would continue the tradition when he began to play in middle school, but I had not realized that the boys would be getting big. One day after a game, as the boys chased after me (not me really, the cookies) I heard one 8th grader say:

OK Mrs. Coates, just put down the cookies and walk away slowly.

Aside from fearlessness in the health classroom, my one claim to local fame has been my cookies. Below is my ultimate recipe and some tips that I have found useful. Have fun and enjoy!

This recipe makes ½ batch. Feel free to double it. Somehow, I have always felt that the half recipe works slightly better than the full- no idea why.

If you are unable to find chocolate chunks, walnuts, and toffee chips in these difficult shopping days, plain chocolate chip cookies will be wonderful as well!

Ingredients 🍪

1 stick softened butter 🧈

Unsalted works best but I have used both and salted is fine as well

6 Tbsp. brown sugar- 4 heaping, 2 regular

(Light brown or dark is your choice. I go through phases with this. Right now I am using light.)

6 Tbsp. white sugar

½ tsp vanilla

(real vanilla, not artificial)

1 egg 🥚

1 cup plus 1½ Tbsp. white flour

½ tsp baking soda

(make sure it’s fresh- if you put a little in water and there is no fizz, time to buy a new box)

½ tsp salt 🧂

One heaping cup chocolate chunks 🍫

(Regular chips will suffice if necessary)

¼ cup toffee chips

(These are difficult to find but keep trying; it’s worth it. My local market carries them and I buy two bags at a time.)

½ cup walnut pieces

(I buy the pieces, not the crushed- you can break the pieces up with your hand- I find the crushed to be dusty.)

Making the Cookies

If you plan to bake the cookies right away, preheat the oven to 365 ° with the rack one up from the bottom. I have a convection oven but I do not use that feature for cookies. You may have to experiment with this. Some ovens seem so much hotter than others. Time permitting, I chill the dough after I make it and so do not heat the oven until I am ready to bake.

NOTE: Take out the butter well ahead of time to soften. Do not put the butter in the microwave to soften unless you are desperate! Cutting it into pieces will speed up the process.

Take out the rest of your ingredients. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl. No need to sift, just stir them together.
Add the brown sugar, the white sugar, the vanilla and the butter directly to your mixing bowl. I use my 20 year old Kitchen-Aid, which I still love. However, my grandmother made chocolate chip cookies using a bowl and a wooden spoon to mix the ingredients and I can tell you they were wonderful and that also probably counts as an arm workout! Turn the mixer on to a medium speed
Break the egg into a separate bowl (important to break the eggs into a separate bowl first to make sure that they are good and also to prevent any shell from ending up in the dough) and add to the sugar mixture. Keep mixing.
Add the flour mixture to the bowl, half at a time, incorporating well.
If you are using an electric mixer now is the time to turn it off.
Add a heaping cup (almost 1 ¼ cups) of chocolate chunks, your toffee pieces, and the walnuts (pecans work well too- I have occasionally used both). I use a large wooden spoon to mix everything together.

Your batter is now ready. As a nurse I have to say this: As tempting as it might be do not sample - raw egg!

Time permitting, place the dough in a zip lock bag until it is well chilled. If you like, you can make the scoops ahead of time and refrigerate them, ready-to-go. If you are baking right away, you may have to adjust your baking time down a little.

Baking the Cookies

Three essentials:

Cookie Sheet, Parchment Paper, Melon Scooper

Place a sheet of parchment paper on the cookie tray. I love parchment paper. I use a melon scooper- I prefer large cookies so I take a heaping scoop and place it onto the tray. I can only fit 9 cookies on a standard sheet.

Set your timer for 8 minutes,then check.

Rotate the tray and bake for probably another three minutes. You want the cookies to be a medium golden color.

Ready!

Take the tray out of the oven and slide the parchment paper onto a heat proof counter or cooking rack.

Cookies are always best the day they are baked!