Giant Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie

Like I said last week, with a new oven, and a new cookbook, I could not resist the urge to do a lot of baking. The next recipe in the Betty Crocker Cookie Book was the aptly named "Giant Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookie."

The recipe calls for almond brickle bits; the only I have ever seen are Heath Toffee Bits, but I can understand that General Mills did not want to advertise a Hershey product. For some reason, my local supermarkets have only been carrying the version of Heath bits that also has milk chocolate mixed in, so that's what I used; I doubt anyone will complain about a little extra chocolate. I also replaced the mini chocolate chips with semisweet chocolate chunks. Though they are pretty much the opposite of a mini chip, that's what I had.

1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup shortening
1/4 cup honey
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 package (12 oz.) miniature semisweet chocolate chips (2 cups)
1 package (7.5 oz.) almond brickle chips (1 cup)

Preheat your oven to 350F. Cream together the butter, shortening, honey and brown sugar. Stir in the egg. Add the flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt, and stir until blended. Then mix in the chocolate and toffee chips.

The recipe calls for 1/4 cup of dough per cookie. Rather than fuss with one of your measuring cups, I highly recommend investing in a #16 cookie/ice-cream scoop. It will vastly simplify and speed the process, and ensure uniform size (and thus uniform baking). They are available from Fantes, where I buy most of my kitchen supplies.

Using the cookie scoop, place the dough on baking sheets lined with parchment paper. These spread out quite a bit, so I did 9 cookies per sheet (3x3); there's just enough dough for 18 cookies, so that's just two sheets. Bake 12-14 minutes. Let them cool for a couple minutes on the baking sheet before moving them to wire racks.

These come out soft, thin, and heavy. They are the closest I have ever made to a cookie from Mrs. Field's, with that dense, buttery goodness. I'm tempted to credit the honey, which I don't recall using in a cookie recipe before; the butter/shortening blend surely helped. Too bad it only made 18; next time I'll double the recipe.