Butterscotch chocolate chip cookies (Modern Baker)

Oh, you have no idea how excited I am to start this section! Cookies are technically supposed to be our last section of the Modern Baker Challenge, but knowing how many cookies people generally bake at this time of year, our brilliant leaders/members decided to flip-flop the final two sections. Looking at the list of possibilities, I positively could not commit to which recipes to pick; they all sound and look so good!

My first choice would probably have been these butterscotch chocolate chip cookies, but they'd already been taken.......But wait! Just because I'm not the official blogger doesn't mean I can't try them, right? Right! :)

I made these to bring to my debate class to thank them for their hard work hosting a middle school debate tournament last week.

I was surprised by the technique. You start by mixing softened butter, brown sugar, vanilla, and eggs in a stand mixer, just until blended. Usually you cream these ingredients for quite a while, but NM warns against over-mixing, so I really just mixed them until they all came together. Then you gently fold in the flour mixture (flour, salt, and baking soda) with a rubber spatula. I was worried that it wouldn't all come together; it just seemed impossible to get all of the flour incorporated. But with patience, it worked and I had smooth cookie dough with no extra flour. Then I folded in a lot of chocolate. NM calls for 6 ounces of chopped bittersweet chocolate and 6 ounces of chopped milk chocolate. I had a 4 ounce bar of bittersweet, so I used that. And then about 6 ounces of semi-sweet chocolate chunks. Even missing 2 ounces of chocolate, I felt like this batter was more chocolate than cookie.

The cookies are placed in teaspoon-sized rounds on the cookie sheets. NM says to cook two trays for 15 minutes, rotating the trays halfway. By 12 minutes, both of my trays were burned. I'm not sure if they were really supposed to be tablespoon-sized? Or if 15 minutes is just way too long? NM's baking times are usually pretty accurate for my oven. I experimented and ended up finding that 10 minutes, baking one tray at a time, seemed about perfect. I was able to get about two trays of good cookies. (I figured high schoolers would eat the burned ones anyway!) So be sure to watch these carefully!!

As for the flavor...they are definitely butterscotchy/toffee-y in flavor and texture and very chocolatey. These are quite different from our normal more traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe, and quite addictive. The containers of cookies (the "good" ones as well as the slightly-overdone ones) lasted all of about 30 seconds in class....and one of my kids asked me to make them again for Monday. :)