Lesson learned during the #52weeks52cookies project: when you challenge yourself to come up with a new recipe every week, you sometimes run out of ideas and flavor combinations and need to look somewhere beyond your own creativity for inspiration. Cookie block. It’s a bit like writer’s block. You know that there’s something inside of you that just wants to come out, but for some reason, you just can’t quite reach it.
That’s when I came up with these cookies. I spent the week before coming up with a fun, creative flavoring idea and needed something new but everything I thought of either felt too similar to things I’d already done or just didn’t excite me. What better way to find that spark than by turning to candy for inspiration?
That’s when I thought about graham cracker toffee. Perhaps it’s something you got as a gift during the holidays, packed in a tin or wrapped in a small cellophane bag. Or maybe someone had it at a school bake sale. It’s a quick-and-easy treat to pull together that tastes as if it’s been filled with all the love and effort in the world.
That’s what I wanted to recreate with these cookies. They’re slightly nostalgic and each bite fills you with that same happiness you feel when you open that tin at Christmas-time or pay 50 cents for a piece or two at a fundraiser.
Whether a kid or an adult, there’s something that just makes me utterly happy about biting into a piece of graham cracker toffee. The only thing I’ve noticed as I’ve gotten older though, is that the actual candy is just a little bit too sweet for me. I always reach a point where I’ve had just a bit too much and a slight stomach ache begins to form despite my taste buds telling me they want more.
The best part about these cookies is that almost half of the flour I would normally use in a cookie recipe is replaced with graham cracker crumbs. That’s right. The graham cracker isn’t broken up into pieces, occasionally found in every-other-bite. It’s a part of the entire make-up of the cookie, making sure that the graham cracker flavor is present every time you go in for more. The graham cracker crumbs gives the cookie a crispness around the edges and a slight snap that make graham crackers such a good structural base for things such as this toffee or s’mores.
Mix in equal parts toasted pecans, toffee, and dark chocolate chips and you have every aspect of the candy covered in a neat, round package.
These cookies are incredibly easy to throw together: cream together your cold butter and your sugars, add in the vanilla and egg followed by your dry ingredients and your fillings, chill and bake. Ta-da! You’re done. There’s no crazy components to prepare hours beforehand. For a candy that takes 15 minutes to prepare and half an hour in the freezer to harden, why should the cookie take much longer to make? It shouldn’t, and these definitely come together with–dare I say it?–more ease than the candy does: for once, there’s no caramel making to be found.
If you make these, I’d love to hear (or see!) how they turn out!
| Prep Time | 10 minutes |
| Cook Time | 20-25 minutes |
| Servings |
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- 1/2 cup butter cold
- 1/2 cup light brown sugar
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 egg large
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 cup flour
- 3/4 cup graham cracker crumbs
- 1 tsp baking soda
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2/3 cup pecans toasted and chopped
- 2/3 cup English toffee bits (Heath Bits O' Brickle)
- 2/3 cup bittersweet/dark chocolate chips
Ingredients
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- In the bowl of a stand mixer or with a hand mixer, cream together butter and sugars until light and fluffy. Once you've hit that stage (about 5 minutes at a high speed), add in egg and vanilla, mixing to combine between each.
- In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, graham cracker crumbs, baking soda, and salt.
- Add dry ingredients to the mixer 1/2 at a time. Mix until just combined and a slight dusting of flour remains.
- Fold in the pecans, toffee bits, and chocolate chips. Leave the dough to chill in the fridge for at least 30 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 300°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. With a large ice cream scoop, scoop out the dough onto your baking sheet. Sprinkle the tops with a little bit of salt.
- Bake cookies for about 20-25 minutes until the edges are golden brown. They'll still be soft when you remove them from the oven. Leave them to cool on the baking sheet for 3-5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool.
Again, I like to put my scooped out cookies in the freezer for about 5 minutes or so just to keep them from spreading too quickly. As long as the dough has been chilled beforehand though (especially if it's been in the fridge for more than 30 minutes) it shouldn't make much of a difference. It's just my personal preference.