Browned Butter Toffee Chip Cookies

So I had every intention of writing this post last night. But then I burned the living shit out of my hand trying to get a skillet out of the oven, so that’s my excuse for writing it tonight. With my mummy-bandaged hand, just in time for halloween. I now have a note to self to invest in real legitimate oven mitts and stop using dinky dishtowels from Target to take things in and out of the oven, because I have now branded my right palm with my cast iron skillet. But damn, those brussel sprouts still tasted good even if I had to eat them with my left hand. So anyways, that’s my excuse for not writing this last night.

Alright, where to begin. So much has happened in the past week. And I’ve been wearing leggings or sweatpants for 90% of it. So, to recap: I quit my job (hooray) and my last day was last Tuesday. My new job doesn’t start until next Monday so I am happily funemployed until then (hip hip hoorah). But because I am incapable of sitting still for more than 3 minutes at a time, I have been packing quite a bit into my days, so the rest of the week might need to have more Netflix and couch time and less running around doing a bazillion things. I’ll include lots of photos of my NYC weekend and a recap of my last day at work and all that fun stuff at the end of the post.

So Sunday rolls around and I’m waiting for the Sunday scaries to hit and then I realize … they won’t. Because I don’t have to go to work Monday. But does that mean I don’t make cookies? I struggled with this for about 4 minutes until I decided if necessary, I could take one for the team and eat three dozen mini cookies so I’d get to baking. After rummaging through my baking drawer of magical goodness, I found a bag of mini chocolate chips and Heath toffee bits. So I decided to adapt my browned butter chocolate chip cookie recipe to have these delish toffee bits. I also like making these mini because you can eat as many as you want and they never add up to a whole cookie, as long as you wash it down with Diet Coke. Science.

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1/2 cup granulated sugar
  • 1 egg
  • 1 egg yolk
  • 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
  • 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon cornstarch
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 cup mini chocolate chips
  • 1/2 cup Heath toffee bits

Step 1: Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Brown the butter in a medium saucepan over the stove and set aside to cool to room temperature. (If you’re impatient like me, stick it in the fridge for about 10 minutes)

Step 2: Cream together butter and sugars. Add the egg, yolk, vanilla extract, and mix well until creamy. Scrape the sides of the bowl down with a spatula before incorporating the dry ingredients.

Step 3: Sift together the flour, cornstarch, salt and baking soda. Slowly add to the wet mixture and beat on a low speed until it is well mixed together.

Step 4: Mix in the chocolate chips and toffee bits until evenly distributed through the batter. Chill the dough for about half an hour in the fridge (or 10 minutes in the freezer for those of us who can’t wait). IMG_1903

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Step 5: On a sil-pat or parchment lined baking sheet, use the medium cookie scoop and place a small scoop of dough on the sheet. Usually for regular size cookies I will use this same scoop and place a heaping scoop of dough. For these, I scrape it along the side of the bowl to make sure it is even. I fit 20 cookies per baking sheet with 4 up and 5 across. IMG_1906

Step 6: Bake at 350 degrees for about 11-13 minutes. The cookies will look slightly undercooked when you take them out of the oven, so leave them on the tray for about 5 minutes to set before transferring to a cooling rack. IMG_1907

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I mean, you can’t go wrong with the salty, browned butter, chocolate and toffee combo. You just can’t. It’s basically a SKOR bar melted into a cookie perfectly. And the mini size cookies are great for these because you want to keep shoving them in your mouth, but there is a lot less guilt when they are in mini form. So you’re welcome for that. IMG_1913

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Now I know what you’re wondering … Did I eat all of these cookies myself? Close, but no. Three lucky recipients will be opening their mailboxes tomorrow to their share of Sunday’s batch of cookies. I don’t like anyone enough to pay the ridiculous cost for the 2-day shipping, but I packaged those cookies tightly enough that they should still taste fresh out of the oven tomorrow as long as the drug sniffing bomb dogs at the post office didn’t rip these packages open, but who could blame them, these are the bomb. (har har har). My Grandpa was giving me a hard time on the phone yesterday about “Where’s my cookies?” which I found funny because of course he was one of the three recipients of the cookies, so I am looking forward to my daily phone call with that guy tomorrow.

Okay, so lot’s of pictures. I don’t really want to talk a lot about my last day of work because I have a reputation to keep up about not being a sappy emotional person who likes hugs. In fact, in my goodbye email, I put in a personal NO HUG request. Which everyone ignored of course. And then I had a few drinks and even initiated a few hugs myself. One day I’ll write a non-cookie blog post on how quitting your job is like a breakup and I’ll go through some of my favorite Sapient moments, the highlight reel was included in my goodbye email. And not that I am the world’s most competitive person or anything, but I got a LOT of email replies that said “best goodbye email ever” – I mean duh, what did you guys expect? I am pretty sure all of my former coworkers were wearing black in mourning of no cookie Monday this week. I’m securing a number of black market drug (cookie) runners to continue some cookie deliveries for my favorite coworkers. Mostly because I expect a lot of Monday mornings for me at the airport coming up and I’m not sure the TSA agents like cookies. I know they don’t like sarcasm, I can tell you that from personal experience. Maybe I’ll write another blog post one day about my absolute disgust for human behavior on airplanes. I should probably get some kind of non-cookie section to this blog. Maybe I’ll call it “fly home Thursday” and document all of my work travel stories. If I had done that 5 years ago when I used to travel every week I would be rich and not sitting here writing a cookie blog in sweatpants right now, because that shit was pure gold. Anyways, I digress. So here are a few shots from the last day:

Meghan was my mini-me for about two years, and left the nest back in February. But she’s still stuck with me for life. We could tell you every item in the CVS circular for a 6-week period with our eyes closed. Disregard the 3 creepy men in the background.IMG_7635

Josh and Molly were my very first friends at Sapient. I met them at orientation in Atlanta. They are also stuck with me forever. IMG_7627

Wednesday and Thursday was raining like a mo’fo. Which meant I worked out one day, and spent the rest of my time catching up on my DVR in sweatpants. Not bad at all. This giant tree fell down two houses up from me. I posted it to facebook saying “This tree fell down, it’s yelling timber. The cops say it better move, it better dance.” and my Mom commented on it saying “The bigger they are the harder they fall.” and there is proof, that I am truly my mother’s daughter. I was also REALLY glad I moved my car earlier in the day when I was lazy and didn’t want to walk 4 blocks to get my hair did. The Southie popo decided to leave the tree all night and chainsaw it at 6am, which was a real treat.IMG_7655

Friday morning I flew down to NYC. Flying to NYC is much faster than taking the train. And I got a flight for $1 on JetBlue because I am the best couponer in the world. The only issue was because you only climb to 22,000 feet for the flight, we flew through a bumpy as a mother cloud of death the entire 45 minute flight. So needless to say I was REALLY pumped when my friend Jackie picked me up at the airport and she put a glass of wine in my hand before 11am. A true friend. Jackie also quit her job and we coordinated our timing of funemployment so we could day drink in the city. First, she took me to Eataly. And I was like a kid in a candy store. I can’t even imagine my Uncle Jimmy there. We also went on Food day which meant there were samples galore. So so so so so good. And then we ate upstairs on the rooftop restaurant and had peach bellinis and it was all amazing.

This is my friend Jackie. We love booze and desserts and hot deals. IMG_7663

And then, we went to Milk Bar. Holy. Mother. Of. Baby. Jesus. I want to remake everything that they had on their menu. I am actually in the process tonight of trying to make the crack pie, in mini form. I mean, it’s called crack pie for a reason. Because I imagine you’d find me at 2am in a kitchen with beady raccoon eyes eating this straight with my hands. So because Jackie and I have a long-standing history of ordering dessert samplers (aka ordering multiple full size desserts) we got a confetti cookie and a slice of crack pie to go, and then ate this swirled soft-serve with corn flake crunch in the middle of the street like homeless lovers. The swirled flavors of ice cream were: crack pie and cereal milk. I’ll give you a minute to let that sink in. And try to imagine that flavor combo. AND TOPPED WITH BUTTERY SUGARY CORN FLAKE MAGIC CRUNCH. GAHHH. Take me back. I will definitely be finding a way to incorporate that corn flake goodness into some future recipes.

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And then we ate the crack pie on top of her roofdeck with a view of the Manhattan skyline. I mean, not a bad Funemployment Friday at all. I tried to remake this recipe tonight but mine looked like a crackhead tried to bake it. IMG_7670

And then after a sushi dinner, we of course needed dessert. So we went to Bar Bacon (um, yumm) and had bacon dusted tater tots (because that’s a normal dessert, right?) and warm chocolate chip cookies with ice cream. I am glad I invested in some fancy durable extra-suck-it-in stretch pants from Jcrew the day before, because I need them.

And I needed them even more on Saturday, because I headed over to Brooklyn to spend the day with my favorite brother and sister-in-law. We went on a NoLita food tour in the city, and it was SO MUCH FUN. It started in SOHO and we went to 6 different stops over about a 2-hour period. Then went home to unbutton our pants and sit on the couch until we could sit up again, and go to a bar to cheer on the Alabama football team (roll tide!). If anyone wants to come visit and do a food tour in Boston, I am game. I’ve already researched a North End and South End food tour. The Chowder food tour looks stupid because it stops at a place where I like to drink vodka and dance my face off, so I don’t want to think about eating chowdah from Lucky’s. Here a few food tour highlights, check out my instagram for more pics:

The Bahn Mi sandwich. This bread tasted like angels hugging me over a giant pit of candy corn. It was so good. Just fresh and flakey and unreal. IMG_7683

Of course there was a NYC pizza stop on the food tour. And it was hot, and cheesy and delicious. A lovely cheese pizza, just for me. (name that movie!)
IMG_7699This is my sister-in-law. She loves food just as much as I do. But she is more photogenic, clearly.

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So that’s it. I took the train back Sunday morning and got a bunch of yard work done in the afternoon. Monday I went to Boston College in the morning to work on a small side project I’m doing with the business school. Today I went to the Wrentham outlets which were more miss than hit, but had a delish dinner with my brother who was in town for work tonight. We always love to get lobster rolls when he’s in town, and usually our go to is Atlantic Fish Company on Boylston Street. He was working closer to South Station today so we went to Row 34 in the seaport, which I have been dying to try for a while now, and had WARM BUTTERED LOBSTAH ROLLS. You can check my instagram for the photo tonight @thesaltedcookie

And now it’s time for bed. My friend Sara is coming over with her little girl Avery for some morning baking which should be fun! I’m thinking of doing Apple Cider Donuts since it’s still that time of year. Oh, and I saw a rainbow yesterday walking Castle Island at sunset. So here you go. IMG_7708