Chocolate Chip and Toffee Cookies

It seems that nearly every person in the food-blogosphere is, or was at some point, on the quest for the perfect chocolate chip cookie. Me, I’m not so concerned about the holy grail of chocolate chip cookies. Cheesecake, maybe I could get into that (if I had the time… and, let’s be honest, the money– cream cheese is expensive!). But you’d be hard-pressed to find a cookie I didn’t like, so the idea of putting in all the effort to find my perfect chocolate chip cookie recipe holds little appeal. There are so many other wonderful cookies I could be baking!

Last night I just had to bake some cookies. I’ve got a list of other recipes I desperately want to try (have you seen these?!), but last night I needed cookies. And that craving necessitated chocolate chip cookies. (Two days ago I was dying to make my signature cookies, but now it’s chocolate chip. Go figure.)

For this attempt, I strayed from the Hershey’s recipe (it’s just so handy there on the back of the bag) and used one I found at Smells like Dessert. (Chris, at least, has ended his quest. I thought I might could skip that whole quest thing and just have the holy grail.) The fact that I didn’t strictly follow the recipe probably defeated the purpose though. As I only had one egg, I necessarily omitted the additional egg yolk, which assuredly changed the texture of my cookies. And I added in about half a bag of heath toffee bits that I’ve been keeping in my pantry for just such an occasion as this. (Although I disadvantaged my cookies by my blasphemous egg-yolk omission, I will staunchly maintain that the addition of toffee pieces can only be construed as an improvement to the original recipe.)

A note to you “I’m still clinging to my New Years resolution and cannot possibly make cookies as large as the recipe suggests” people– just make the cookies that big. I myself defied Chris’s plea to do so and made most of mine tablespoon-sized, but the last six I said what the heck, and plopped mounds of dough on the baking sheet. It really does make a difference!

In conclusion, while these are not my holy grail of chocolate chip cookies (perhaps I should try these again with that extra egg yolk, though) I am quite happy with this recipe. (Rebecca was rather enthusiastic, and gave me a high-five upon biting into one.) Crunchy around the edges, chewy towards the center. And who doesn’t love the toffee-chocolate pairing? My waistline, maybe not so pleased.

Recipe at Smells Like Dessert.