Flat, Chewy, Heath Bar Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ok, so from reading the title you know these cookies are flat, chewy and filled with chunks of Heath bar and chocolate, but what you don't know is how amazingly fabulous and addictive this spin on traditional chocolate chip cookies truly is! So addictive, that I generally only allow myself to make them once a year and only to bring to someone else's house because I absolutely cannot have them around. Yeah, they're that good!!
For just about the last 10 years, I have been bringing them to my cousin's house for our annual Day-After-Thanksgiving celebration and I think they're my sister Ali's favorite cookie! This year sadly, everyone's schedules were too crazy and we didn't have our get-together so I didn't make the cookies. When I was looking for something to bring to a recent party, my daughter reminded me about how I hadn't made these last year, so how could I resist?!!
The cookies are large and buttery with just enough cookie dough to hold together an almost too generous amount of Heath bar and chocolate chunks. And unlike most flat cookies, these are chewy, not crunchy, so you get the mouth feel of a thicker cookie with the delightfulness of a thin, caramelized, melt-in-your-mouth kind of texture. So yummy and so easy to pull off pieces from a large cookie, pop into your mouth and convince yourself that you've just had a little bite and it's really not so bad, even as you realize that that little bite has become 3 or 4 and a large majority of that large cookie is somehow missing!!
Flat, Chewy, Heath Bar Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Makes about 30 cookies
Prep Time: 15 minutes (plus at least 2-3 hours chilling the dough and preferably overnight); Bake Time: 14-16 minutes
Ingredients
- 2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 1 1/4 teaspoons baking soda
- 1 tablespoon kosher salt
- 2 sticks (8 ounces) unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups light brown sugar, packed
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
- 2 cups chopped bittersweet chocolate (use what you love and chop roughly--you want large chunks)
- 2 generous cups chopped Heath Bars ( I generally buy the mini ones and open at least 25 of them)
The Recipe
1. Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt and set aside.
2. Using an electric mixer, cream together the butter and both sugars until fluffy, about 3 minutes. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well between each addition and then the vanilla. Add the flour mixture and blend until a wet, sticky dough forms. Fold in the chocolate and Heath Bars. Cover the bowl and chill for at least 2-3 hours until dough is very firm, or better yet, overnight.
3. Preheat the oven to 325ºF and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Scoop out 2 1/2 tablespoon sized clumps of dough and roll into balls, placing them on the cookie sheets at least 2 inches apart (these really spread). I usually fit about 9 balls of dough per sheet. Then using the back of your hand, flatten the balls into 1/2 thick disks. In between batches, re-chill the dough.
4. Bake for about 14-16 minutes, reversing the trays top to bottom and front to back once during the process, until the edges of the cookies are golden brown. You want these to be chewy, so don't overbake--they harden a bit as they cool. Cool cookies on trays on a cooling rack. If cookies run into each other, use a sharp knife to separate and transfer cookies directly to the rack to finish cooling completely. Repeat process until all the dough is used.
5. Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week.
Enjoy!
Note: Recipe adapted from a 2006 New York Times piece by Amanda Hesser. I swapped out the toasted walnuts for Heath Bar chunks and significantly increased the chilling time of the dough.
