Hazelnut Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

While digging through my binder of printed Food Network.com recipes, I stumbled upon one for Giada's Hazelnut Chocolate Chip Cookies. I made some modifications and when I made them they turned out ridonkulously delicious. I'm glad I didn't have lunch that day because I scarfed down 3 almost immediately.

The modifications I made to this recipe are important to note. What I've encountered among many cookie recipes is that they call for way too much sugar. Sure you need sugar, but you don't need that much. A high amount of sugar will weigh down your dessert and cause it to burn quickly. It will make cookies crispy rather than soft. I reduced the sugar from Giada's recipe from 1 cup of brown sugar and 1 cup of granulated sugar to 1 cup of brown and 1/2 cup of granulated. It made a world of difference. And because these cookies were loaded with goodies (chocolate chips, toasted hazelnuts and toffee bits), too much sugar would have prevented these ingredients to shine. Also, it's really necessary to use oats in these cookies because the oat flakes help give the cookie structure to hold all the other ingredients together. So I didn't really bother with chopping the oats in the food processor. Not that I have a food processor anyways!


Ingredients:

1/2 cup of oats
2-1/4 cups of flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup (2 sticks) of unsalted butter, partially melted until really soft
1 cup of packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup sugar

2 large eggs
1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1/2 cup of Heath Milk Chocolate Toffee Bits
1 11.5 oz bag of Ghiradelli Milk Chocolate Chips
1 cup of Diamond Chopped Hazelnuts

I was so glad to discover that Diamond sold bags of Chopped Hazelnuts and that my local Market Basket carried them. Especially since I had a coupon.

Dry toast the hazelnuts in a skillet at low heat. Do this while you are preparing the other ingredients. Once you get a whiff of that wonderful hazelnutty aroma, then shut off the heat and let the nuts cool.

Sure you can buy some Heath or Skor bars and chop them up yourself, but its easier to buy a nice back of Heath toffee bits already chopped! And Ghirardelli chocolate chips are my go-to for chocolate now. I don't bake cookies without them. (I promise I'm not sponsored by either company)

In a large mixing bowl, combine the oats, flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt. I love the fact that this recipe has a substantial amount of both baking powder and baking soda. It made these cookies puff up beautifully. And the salt helps bring out the flavor in the chocolate. Maybe next time I'll add a bit of instant coffee granules.

Fun picture alert!

In a separate bowl, combine your sugars.

Add your partially melted butter and mix thoroughly. Okay, you could take room temperature butter and mix it with a hand-held mixer. That's fine. But I didn't want to. This shortcut didn't affect the cookies at all. It much easier just to melt the better and stir it into the sugar.

Add your chips, toffee bits and hazelnuts to the dry ingredients.

Coat the bits well. This is a crucial step. Coating them in the flour mixture will help all the chunks stay in place in the cookie, instead of sinking to the bottom.

Mix two eggs and vanilla into the butter-sugar mixture. Pour mixture into the dry mixture and stir until the cookie dough no longer has any signs of flour.


Drop spoonfulls onto a cookie sheet. I always use aluminum foil because it's easy to pop the cookies out and use the sheet again immediately. Plus, no clean up.

Bake at 325 degrees for 15 minutes but please make sure you check in on them at around 12-13 minutes in case they get too brown on the bottom.

Enjoy with a nice tall glass of milk!