This is a great cookie to make if you're doing some holiday baking and want something a little more showy than the norm. The base of this recipe is chocolate chip cookie dough. To cut down on time, you could use refrigerated cookie dough, but I always use the recipe my mom made when we were kids. I just tweak the flour a bit.
Hillary's Basic Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe:
1 2/3 cup flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup shortening
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 cups chocolate chips
Cream together butter, shortening and both sugars. The temperature of the butter is very important for texture. As close to room temperature as you can get it. If it is too hot and melted, your chocolate chip cookies will have a really flat, droopy appearance. Too cold, and it just won't mix well.
Add eggs and vanilla. Mix together until smooth.
Add flour, salt and baking soda. Mix until just blended. You don't want to over mix or your cookies will be tough. You want the dough to be a bit sticky. If there is too much flour, your cookies will end up dry and hard. You may have to adjust your flour for humidity.
Stir in chocolate chips.
Roll into balls. don't handle too much with your hands or you will melt the butter in the dough and your cookies will be too flat. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.
Now when we are making cookie bars, instead of rolling into balls, I press them into either a deep dish pizza pan or a jelly roll pan. Bake for 13-16 minutes, until golden on top.
Just a little tangent here.....I didn't even know what a jelly roll pan was until I had 4 kids. It's a cookie sheet with a lip around the edges. I have this dear friend that introduced me to the wonderful world of cookie bars, and blessed me with one of her jelly roll pans, just so I could make her famous Oatmeal Fudgie bars.
(I'll have to see if I can get her permission to share that recipe with you.)
I met her when I had just moved to Texas and was about to have baby #4. I didn't have any family around, and the one person that I knew was in the throws of pink eye with her kids when I went into labor. Well, my dear jelly roll pan friend (this was before she gave me the pan), that I barely knew, had offered to "help with whatever" when I had the baby. This could have been a very casual offer to be polite. But I was desperate and had no other options, so I took her up on it. She ended up with my 3 kids. Plus her SIX children- which included triplet 1 year olds, and an adopted child. On top of that she was pregnant with her 7th. This lady truly is a saint!! (I still can't believe I would do this to her!!) She ended up with them for a couple days while I was in the hospital laboring and recovering. One of my kids ended up throwing up at her house- I don't know if it was nerves or illness. But she kept them all anyway. Through this experience we became very fast friends and helped each other for years until she moved away. I still miss her like crazy (though it's been years since she abandoned me for Colorado). She has taught me so much and it warms my heart to think of her every time I use the jelly roll pan.
Anyway- back to our recipe!! Our oven timer is going off and our sheet pan cookies are done by now.
(*Just another note: instead of regular chocolate chips, I used the Reeces peanut butter chips for this recipe.)
Now the fun part!! You can use whatever toppings you love in a chocolate chip cookie. This time I melted some caramel that was left over from our "How to NOT make Caramel Apples" post. (You can click there or the pretty version of caramel apples here. )
Drizzle the top with the caramel. Then melt some white chocolate, and drizzle that over the caramel. Top with Hershey kisses, along with some pretzels. Last, I sprinkled just a touch of kosher salt over the top to help balance out all the sweet.
These would be amazing with heath bits or butterfinger bits or peanut butter cups pressed on top or m&m's or snickers...........
Or in squares:
Roll into balls. don't handle too much with your hands or you will melt the butter in the dough and your cookies will be too flat. Bake at 375 degrees for 10-12 minutes.
Now when we are making cookie bars, instead of rolling into balls, I press them into either a deep dish pizza pan or a jelly roll pan. Bake for 13-16 minutes, until golden on top.
Just a little tangent here.....I didn't even know what a jelly roll pan was until I had 4 kids. It's a cookie sheet with a lip around the edges. I have this dear friend that introduced me to the wonderful world of cookie bars, and blessed me with one of her jelly roll pans, just so I could make her famous Oatmeal Fudgie bars.
(I'll have to see if I can get her permission to share that recipe with you.)
I met her when I had just moved to Texas and was about to have baby #4. I didn't have any family around, and the one person that I knew was in the throws of pink eye with her kids when I went into labor. Well, my dear jelly roll pan friend (this was before she gave me the pan), that I barely knew, had offered to "help with whatever" when I had the baby. This could have been a very casual offer to be polite. But I was desperate and had no other options, so I took her up on it. She ended up with my 3 kids. Plus her SIX children- which included triplet 1 year olds, and an adopted child. On top of that she was pregnant with her 7th. This lady truly is a saint!! (I still can't believe I would do this to her!!) She ended up with them for a couple days while I was in the hospital laboring and recovering. One of my kids ended up throwing up at her house- I don't know if it was nerves or illness. But she kept them all anyway. Through this experience we became very fast friends and helped each other for years until she moved away. I still miss her like crazy (though it's been years since she abandoned me for Colorado). She has taught me so much and it warms my heart to think of her every time I use the jelly roll pan.
Anyway- back to our recipe!! Our oven timer is going off and our sheet pan cookies are done by now.
(*Just another note: instead of regular chocolate chips, I used the Reeces peanut butter chips for this recipe.)
Drizzle the top with the caramel. Then melt some white chocolate, and drizzle that over the caramel. Top with Hershey kisses, along with some pretzels. Last, I sprinkled just a touch of kosher salt over the top to help balance out all the sweet.
These would be amazing with heath bits or butterfinger bits or peanut butter cups pressed on top or m&m's or snickers...........
You can serve them cut up in pie slices:
But my favorite way would be to cook them pizookie style (just a bit under done- and usually I bake them in individual ramekin dishes when I make them that way), and throw some Blue Bell ice cream on top. And of course a tall glass of milk.
Just a recap of the toppings I used in this recipe:
Melted Caramel
Melted White Chocolate Chips
Hershey Kisses
Pretzels
Kosher Salt
Now put one aside, and go give the rest to some friends!! Merry Christmas!!
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