Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not trust women.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Come on, man.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Let me file that under fuck it.

Second rate reporter says what?

We still have time to mess this up!

Disagreements are healthy; personal attacks are not.

“But what about the lurkers?”

Hot air and ill-informed banter

America is going up in flames. The NYTimes fawns over MAGA celebrities. No longer a real newspaper.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Cooking / A New Year’s Eve Snack: Tollhouse Cookies

A New Year’s Eve Snack: Tollhouse Cookies

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Some sweets to send everyone into a sweet, happy, and healthy New Year! The other night in comments we were discussing Tollhouse cookies, among other things, so here is the recipe I learned.

Tollhouse cookies
2 cups plus 2 tblspoons all-purpose flour
1 tspoon baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) butter, softened
½ cup packed dark brown sugar
½ cup packed light brown sugar
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1 tspoon vanilla
2 eggs
12 ounces dark chocolate chips
12 ounces Heath bar (toffee) chips
Preheat oven to 375 F.  Combine flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and set aside.  In a large bowl cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla extract.  Add eggs and beat until incorporated.  Gradually add flour and mix until incorporated.  Add morsels. Let the dough rest in the fridge for at least a 1/2 hour. Drop by rounded tablespoon onto greased baking sheets. Bake for 9-11 minutes or until golden brown.  Let stand for 2 minutes, remove to cooling racks.
You’ve probably noticed a couple of things. The first is that instead of using a full cup of either dark brown sugar or light brown sugar, I mixed it half and half. There’s a reason for this. If you use all light brown sugar the mouthfeel on the cookies is not rich enough. If you use all dark brown sugar the mouthfeel is too rich. Mixing it half and half seems to get you to the right balance. I also substitute dark chocolate chips for the semi-sweet ones and add toffee chips to the cookie dough as well. It gives them a little something extra. I also use a small ice cream scooper with that little scraper mechanism. It makes portioning the cookies out very easy.
I just made a batch for my nephews. These have butterscotch chips instead of chocolate and no toffee. One of my nephews doesn’t like chocolate. These butterscotch Tollhouse cookies are decadent.
Tollhouse_Cookies1
Tollhouse_Cookies2

Reader Interactions

58Comments

  1. 1.

    Adam L Silverman

    And I have no idea why the spaces I’ve inserted in between the paragraphs and the pictures is not there.

  4. 4.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I also want to try out the recipe with cinnamon chips. Maybe doing half a batch with the basic dough as given (I have also always done half-light half-dark brown sugar), and half with the addition of a tsp of ground cinnamon.

    Wonder how it would be with bits of candied ginger….

  5. 5.

    Adam L Silverman

    @SiubhanDuinne: I would think they would be excellent with the cinnamon chips. As for the candied ginger, try it. The worst that happens is you don’t like it and have to pitch a batch of cookies out.

  7. 7.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Adam L Silverman: FYWP, exactly. I have the same problem on my blog. I switched to line-and-a-half spacing and that solves the paragraph breaks for me, but doesn’t let me do double lines unless I do like an extra * * * or left-bracket-hr-slash-right-bracket in between.

    As my boyfriend likes to point out that I say: shruggles.

    ETA: Cool recipe, looks yummy, and of course happy new years! The former IT Guy in me got the better of me when I wrote the original comment.

  12. 12.

    HRA

    Thank you for the recipe. I will be making them tomorrow with butterscotch chips and chocolate chips. I have an overload of both white and dark chocolate chips on hand. I have to decide which ones I want to use. Happy New Year to you and your family.

  13. 13.

    debbie

    I remember hearing about an MIT study which determined that refrigerating the dough for 36 hours before baking resulted in the optimal chocolate chip cookie.

  14. 14.

    PurpleGirl

    I just turned on NY1 for a few moments. They are broadcasting from Times Square. People are in fenced in areas but it still looks packed. (I don’t like the main commercial stations but I like Time Warner’s NY1 for news.) I keep checking out where they are and then go over just before midnight to see the ball drop.

  15. 15.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: I can’t speak to that. I do know that you don’t want to take the dough, warm from being turned into dough, in a warm kitchen and put it right into the oven.

  28. 28.

    PurpleGirl

    @Adam L Silverman: TY. I can never remember what they call them. It’s the same fencing they set up for parades, street fair cross streets, and of course, political demonstrations.

  29. 29.

    FlyingToaster

    @Adam L Silverman: nbsp (non-breaking space) on your paragraph lines, otherwise FYWP will, indeed, FY post.

    And no, I don’t know how to do it in Balloon Juice’s post mode. I can barely operate the site in Google Chrome (it’s totally failed in Firefox for the moment — nothing to do with the upgrade, several sites went fubar with the last 2 ff updates).

  32. 32.

    Adam L Silverman

    @FlyingToaster: I actually went in and added breaking spaces after I noticed the missing spaces. Still didn’t fix it. My guess its an artifact problem that’s waiting for one of the fixes to come through.

  39. 39.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Wondering whether I should even try to stay awake for another, mmmm, 23 minutes. I mean, it’ll be 2016 with or without my assistance. And I feel suddenly fatigued.

    So, in case I don’t make it (or even if I do) a very happy New Year to my fellow Juicers!

  40. 40.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    My mom made Cowboy Cookies when I was a kid – they’re still my favorite. She had and old newspaper clipping with the recipe. I even put the recipe in my dissertation.

    I do things a bit differently than that recipe, and yours above.

    * – I always make a double batch. I roll the dough into golf-ball sized balls and end up with about 60 ea 3 inch diameter cookies.
    * – I always use dark brown sugar (no white sugar).
    * – I use different flour variations when the mood strikes: 1/2 bread flour, 1/2 WW flour; or 1/2 AP flour and 1/2 AP flour.
    * – Even using oven tiles on the bottom shelf and air-insulated baking sheets, they’re very sensitive to temperature in the oven. Especially if, like me, you’re using a 50 year old electric oven. Gas ovens may be more forgiving, but I’ve not had the chance to try that.
    * – I use 2 each 12 oz bags of chocolate chips rather than just 2 cups (for a double batch).

    Like you, I refrigerate the dough after mixing it all together.

    Fortunately, the way they cook seems to tell you what temperature you need. (An oven thermometer can help some, but not if your oven has 50+F swings like mine.) If they collapse and are very thin, the temperature is too high. If the cookies are tall and thick, the temperature is too low. But one has to be careful about getting the flour and oats proportions right, too, or they won’t cook perfectly either.

    Ideally, one should take them out of the oven when the bottom has a lightly toasted color but without the chocolate chips starting to burn. It can be hard to time them exactly right.

    Fortunately, even when the cookies aren’t perfect, they’re still delicious. Enjoy!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  41. 41.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Man, that was a painful post. :-(

    I tried about a dozen times to get the Cowboy Cookie comment to post…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    debbie

    @Gin & Tonic:

    I can’t see your link without subscribing, but I remember listening to “The Splendid Table” on NPR, and they were talking about the study. T

  43. 43.

    JPL

    Oh goody, my neighbor saved the best fireworks for now. Since they have been going nonstop since 8, I’m not impressed.

  45. 45.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    Happy New Year everyone. Here’s hoping it’s a memorable one for all the right reasons.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  46. 46.

    Anne Laurie

    @Adam L Silverman: Trick I use: a single period to ‘establish’ each blank line where you want one.

    (It’s practically invisible — at least on my screen — but if you wanna get fancy, use the ‘div – align’ html code to move the period over to the right where nobody looks for it.)

    P.S. New Year’s thread up top!

  47. 47.

    max

    @Omnes Omnibus: Well, obviously it’s not meant to be taken literally; it refers to any manufacturers of dairy products.

    Shut up, Big Nose.

    max
    [‘Happy non-astronomical Gregorian calendrical phenomenon!’]

  55. 55.

    Cleos Mom

    Another recipe hack: try adding a double-dose of butterscotch chips to whatever good oatmeal cookie recipe you have.

  56. 56.

    Marko

    While some folks stay attached to the flavors they grew up with, I avoid ersatz chocolate from Nestle & Hersey. I’ve done tastings of many of the premium brands (I worked my way through college & grad school as a line cook & baker) and have found Lindt to taste great and have a nice mouth feel. Moreover, they are widely available in a variety of cocoa percentages and generally at lower prices than other premium chocolates (usually between $2.75 to $3.50 per 100g in multi-bar packs at Amazon). In bittersweet or semisweet, the major difference is that they use cocoa butter exclusively rather than a combination of milk solids & cocoa butter. I simply chop up the bars into chunks which tend to be a bit larger than the packaged chips.

  57. 57.

    Ella in New Mexico

    Am I the only one here who has wondered for years what the two extra tablespoons of flour actually do in the Nestles Tollhouse Cookie recipe? It just seems so unnecessary. Like within the margin of error unnecessary.

  58. 58.

    I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet

    @Ella in New Mexico: If you get everything right, cookies should be reproducible. It’s just chemistry, after all. The ratio of flour to fat and everything else is very important so I wouldn’t be surprised if the 2T is needed in the perfect recipe.

    But unless you’re willing to, say, always sift your flour, weigh instead of use volume measures for brown sugar and other dry ingredients, always use the same size eggs, always use ingredients of the same age and moisture content, etc., etc., then you’re right the 2T of flour is likely in the noise. Especially if you use beat-up metal measuring cups like me!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

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