I found it! Buried in my recipe binder, a treasured recipe from my friend Joy’s mom. My favorite holiday cookie, Mrs. S’s Toffee Squares. As soon as we received her plate of Christmas Cookies I laid claim to those Toffee Squares, and truth be told, her Crescents, Pecan Tartlets, and Spritz Cookies… lol.
These delightful toffee squares made their appearance, courtesy of Joy, at our preschool cookie swap last week. A gentle reminder to find and post the recipe. So I dug into my cookie files that haven’t been digitized, lol, and luckily found her recipe. I might have to make a batch today to celebrate!
Our 25th Preschool Cookie Swap not only included a variety of delicious cookies but traditional, made from scratch, eggnog.
I also love Alice Medrich’s Toffee Bars, a recipe very similar to Mrs. S’s recipe. The directions offer a little more detail than Mrs. S’s recipe and are equally divine.
Tips for Mrs. S’s recipe:
Use salted butter. This is an old recipe, I imagine, only salted butter was available. If you use unsalted butter, increase salt to 1/2 teaspoon.
Gold Medal or Pillsbury Flour was and is, the most widely available flour. One of those would have been the flour Mrs. S used, but if you only have King Arthur, spoon it lightly into your measuring cup. I have read that folks compensate for the protein in King Arthur by reducing the amount of flour in the recipe by 1 tablespoon per cup. Haven’t tried it myself yet. Mainly because I’m nuts and have multiple varieties of flour on hand including Gold Medal, King Arthur, Bob’s, White Lily 🤷🏻♀️
Reminder, do not overwork the dough after adding the flour to the butter-sugar mixture.
Go crazy, use different chocolate varieties for the topping, dark, milk or bittersweet. Change up the nuts too. Her recipe calls for milk chocolate and pecans or almonds, my “grown-up version” uses dark chocolate and hazelnuts.
Keyword chocolate cookies, toffee bar recipe, Toffee Bars
Prep Time 20 minutesminutes
Cook Time 25 minutesminutes
Ingredients
Cookie Base
1/2cupbutter
1/2cupbrown sugar
1teaspoonvanilla
1cupunsifted all purpose flour
1/4teaspoonsalt
Topping
6 1.2ouncemilk chocolate barsor 2 baker's German milk chocolate bars
3/4cupfinely chopped nutspecans
Instructions
Cream butter, beat in sugar and vanilla.
Combine flour and salt, stir into the creamed mixture.
Pat dough evenly into a 13 x 9 x 2 inch ungreased pan.
Bake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes.
Remove from oven, lay chocolate bars on top. When melted, spread evenly over dough. Sprinkle with nuts. Let cool, cut into diamond shape.Makes 44 cookies.
NCOTB #2 Orange, Pistachio and Chocolate Shortbread (New Cookies on the Block)
Yay, the TwelveSeven Eight Days of Christmas Cookies!
The best-laid plans of mice and me…sometimes need a tweak. Actually, not to pat myself on the back or anything, I think I did pretty “good”. In between holiday baking we took a quick trip to Seattle. Four days of eating, walking, visiting the Space Needle and the Chihuly Garden and Glass, and watching the Forty-Niners beat the Seahawks! I still managed to bake 8 days of Christmas cookies!
The NCOTB (new cookies on the block, a nod to all you boy band fans) include a couple from this year’s New York Times Holiday Cookies. My favorite of the bunch is Eric Kim’s Gochujang Caramel Cookies (I’ve made three batches already). Crispy edges, chewy center, buttery with a sweet kick from the Gochujang paste, it’s different and delightful. My other favorite (can you have two favorites?) is Sue Li’s Orange, Pistachio, and Chocolate Shortbread. Buttery shortbread studded with candied orange peel, green pistachios, and dark chocolate for a visually fun and tasty cookie.
Cookie Caveat
But, the first time I read through the recipe and NOTES (ALWAYS read the notes, foodies are not shy about sharing their opinion of a dish) it became clear that there were a couple of hitches in the recipe. My OCD-Sherlockian-Watson persona took over. I poured over the comments and scrutinized the measurements and directions (occupatinal hazard, I’m a pediatric pharmacist).
My dear NYTCooking – Something is afoot, there are discrepancies in the volumes and weights for this recipe, where are your editors? LOL. 3 cups of flour is not 419 grams. 3/4 cup of granulated sugar is not 175 grams. So, I set about to modify the recipe as best I could:
I used 375 grams of King Arthur AP Flour aligning with std measurements for a cup since there were quite a few comments that the dough was too dry & crumbly.
Sue Li commented once to use 175 grams of sugar, so that’s what I used. If there is wiggle room it would be with the sugar, use 150 grams for a not-as-sweet cookie.
The butter is also off, I opted to go by weight not volume.
I added 1 tsp vanilla, which couldn’t hurt plus added a bit more moisture.
The dough came together nicely. Do not overmix, once it starts to clump, stop and gather together.
The 8-hour chilling time in the original recipe allows the flour to absorb moisture and hold together. The modifications result in a nice, moist dough. You may not need an 8-hour chill time. The dough needs to be solid enough to slice and still hold its shape.
See how “purdy” the orange, green, and brown specks are?!
The finished cookie was buttery, with a fine crumb texture, with the candied orange, pistachios, and chocolate taking it over the holiday top. Luckily I squirreled away some dough in the freezer (the beauty of slice-and-bake cookies) that will be lovely on New Year’s Eve with a glass of bubbly!
Whisk together flour and salt in a medium bowl. Combine butter and sugar in a large bowl, or in the bowl of a stand mixer. Using an electric mixer (fitted with the paddle attachment if using a stand mixer), beat at medium-high speed until the mixture is pale in color, about 2 minutes, periodically scraping down the sides with a rubber spatula (don't skip this, it makes a difference). Add egg yolk and blend until combined.
Add flour mixture and mix on low until combined. If there are dried bits of flour left around the bowl, use a rubber spatula to smoosh them in with the dough. Add orange peel, pistachios and chopped chocolate, fold in with a rubber spatula. (The dough will be crumbly (although with the modifications, less so). If necessary, use the electric mixer to add the mix-ins, or work them in with your hands until fully incorporated.)
To form the cookies, line an 8 by 8-inch baking pan with plastic wrap and leave a generous amount of overhang on all sides. Transfer the dough to the prepared pan and press firmly to flatten in an even layer. Cover with plastic wrap and chill dough for 8 hours or overnight before baking.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
Using the plastic wrap overhang, remove the dough from the pan and cut the square into three equal rectangles. It's going to be tough to get out of the pan but just be patient and pull gently on the plastic to gradually remove from pan.
Cut each rectangle crosswise into roughly 1⁄3-inch-thick slices and lay them flat on the prepared baking sheets, about 3⁄4-inch apart. (If the dough crumbles when slicing, simply push the mixture together to reform the cookie.) Bake until lightly golden on the bottom but still blonde on the edges, 15 to 17 minutes.
Remove from the oven, allow cookies to cool on the sheets. The cookies will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 1 week.
Awhile back I reviewed Food52 Mighty Salads. Flipping through the book I found quite a few recipes to try including a tomato pasta salad, a crab and corncake salad and a tomato cucumber salad with lamb kebabs. At the very end of the book, snuck in on the last page (those sneaky Food52ers) I found a single non-salad recipe.
Better yet, it is a DESSERT recipe. A tantalizing little tidbit among a sea of greens and grains. As part of their thank you page and because they couldn’t write a cookbook without a sweet finish, they came up with Berry Salad with Brioche Croutons. It is simple, yummy and the perfect ending.
….of course I had to try it.
It is STUPID EASY and delicious. Start with your favorite loaf of brioche. Cut 4 slices about 3/4 inch thick and then cut into cubes. Place in a buttered baking dish, throw in a handful of nuts, your choice. I like walnuts but feel free to use pecans or almonds or a mix of your favorite nuts. Drizzle with 2 tablespoons honey and finish with a sprinkle of sea salt or kosher salt (a little bigger sprinkle). Bake in a preheated oven (350 degrees) for 7 minutes or until golden brown. Cool. Store in an airtight container.
Now you could just munch on these bad boys all by themselves, which I have been known to do, or you could throw them on top of a bowl of berries-strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, whateverberries (just checking if you are paying attention) sweetened with some raw sugar as suggested by the folks at Food52.
My favorite option is on top of plain Greek yogurt with a touch of honey and fresh berries.. It adds a nice crunch and makes my breakfast seem deliciously decadent. Its way too easy not to try.
