Time for Toffee Cookies!

The cookie from Kim’s Kitchen that is most frequently requested: Toffee Cookies! These delicious cookies were a Christmas tradition in our family.

My father worked with a photographer in Englewood, New Jersey, after returning home from serving in the U.S. Navy during World War II. His employer’s wife gave the recipe to my mother, sometime in the 1940’s.

A Christmas favorite: Toffee Cookies.

Ingredients For Toffee Cookies

• 1 cup light brown sugar, lightly packed
• 1/2 pound cold butter
• 1 egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon real vanilla extract
• 2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour

Added After Baking the Toffee Cookies

• 10 (+ or -) ounces milk chocolate. I use 7 ounces Hershey’s milk chocolate plus 3 or 4 ounces Symphony milk chocolate. Use any kind of chocolate you prefer.
• 1 to 1 1/4 cups chopped walnuts

The Process

• Preheat oven to 350°F.
• Cream butter and sugar in a stand mixer until well-mixed but not overdone.
• Add egg yolk and vanilla. Mix, and scrape bowl.
• Add flour in batches. Mix well, scraping bowl. Dough will be thick.
• Spread on parchment-paper-lined cookie sheet that has a raised edge. I use an approximately 10″ x 15″ jelly roll pan, which is thicker than cookie sheets and has been in our family for decades. Use a butter knife and your fingers to spread the dough; this is the hardest part. The palms of your hands can flatten it somewhat; it will flatten more in the oven.
• Bake 20 to 25 minutes, or until the top and edges begin to show a light golden brown color. Watch it carefully. One minute too long will result in a crispy cookie, and everyone in my family, except Mother, likes it chewy. Remove from oven.

Now, the Toppings

• Break up the chocolate into pieces. Before the toffee cools, place chocolate on top. It will melt on the hot toffee. If the chocolate doesn’t melt, place cookie sheet back into the warm oven, turned off, but monitor it closely. Various brands of chocolate have different melting points. Use a butter knife to smooth the chocolate over the toffee.
• Sprinkle with chopped walnuts.
• Allow the toffee to cool before cutting into squares. This could take a few hours at room temperature. If the chocolate is still soft, your toffee cookies will not cut neatly!
• Cut with a long-bladed knife into 1 1/2″ squares. Place in a cookie tin or plastic container, lined—and layers separated—with wax paper.

More dessert recipes from Kim’s kitchen:

Almond Crescents

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Gingersnaps

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Kim’s Gingersnaps

Here’s another cookie recipe that’s a family tradition during the holidays, but we enjoy them at any time of the year. A tiny few in our family prefer them baked until crispy. Most of us, however, like them soft inside. Gingersnap or gingersoft—your choice. This recipe has been adjusted a bit from my mother’s original recipe.

Gingerbread tiny houses.

Ingredients For Making Gingersnaps

• 1½ sticks butter
• 1 cup white granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup unsulphured molasses
• 1 large egg
• 2¼ cups all-purpose unbleached flour
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon—I use just a bit more of the ginger, cloves, and cinnamon for extra “warmth”. Mix these 6 dry ingredients together in a bowl.
• Very fine sugar in a separate bowl, for coating formed cookie dough

One of Santa’s favorites.

The Process

Finished cookie dough.

• Mix butter and white sugar in the large bowl of a stand mixer. Don’t over-mix it.
• Add the molasses. Mix well, scraping with spatula.
• Add egg, and mix.
• Gradually add and mix in the flour-spice mixture. Scrape with spatula.
• After it’s all mixed together, refrigerate the covered dough for at least a couple of hours.
• Preheat oven to 375°F or a little lower.
• Line 1 or 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.
• Now that the dough is cool, spoon out enough dough to make a 1″ diameter ball. Roll it between the palms of your hands to form a sphere. Place balls, in batches, in the very fine sugar to coat. Roll them around and/or spoon the fine sugar over the dough.
• Place on cookie sheets, about 3″ on center, and bake for about 8 minutes. They might need less time or a minute more, depending on your oven. In this electric oven, I put a pyrex dish of water over the “hot spot”, and bake one large and one small cookie sheet at a time. To avoid hot spots, perhaps baking one sheet at a time will work better.
• Lay the gingersnaps out on the wax-paper-covered counter to cool somewhat. If they’re placed in cookie tins before they have fully cooled, they will stay a little softer. It takes almost no time to go from soft and luscious to crispy, so watch them carefully while baking and while cooling.
• Wrap cooled cookies in foil and a plastic bag to freeze the excess.

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When Brynn and Logan were little, I shaped some of the dough into gingerbread men, just for them. A little ginger, by the way, can settle an upset stomach and makes me feel just a bit warmer. How do you like them—crispy or soft? Either way, enjoy!

Soft gingersnaps fresh from Kim’s kitchen.

Here are links to more of Kim’s dessert recipes:

Toffee Cookies

Almond Crescents

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

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