Toffee Almond Sandies

For Meg's birthday treat, I had a recipe alllll picked out. But then on the day that I was going to shop for the ingredients for that recipe, she and I were talking about Special K cereal and our mutual love for the Vanilla Almond variety. Then we started talking about the other kinds of Special K we liked ... basically, it was quite a conversation about nuts (like pecans) and flavors (like the yogurt one).

I was playing around on good ol' allrecipes.com and started searching for cookies with almonds in them. I searched for cookies with pecans. I was having a grand time, so I came up with plenty of options. My biggest obstacle, of course, was in the shipping. It it quite hot in Florida, where I am, and in Arizona, where Meg is, so I needed something that wouldn't get all mushy or melted. I usually go with a cake mix recipe in times of shipping baked goods, because they stay extremely moist, but I thought I'd be adventurous and try something different.

I wasn't sure if Meghan liked some of the other ingredients I was finding (after all, the girl hates peanuts and peanut butter, so who knows what other things she doesn't like?!). So I started texting her with random questions about whether she liked butterscotch, toffee, raisins, pistachios (no recipes with pistachios were actually involved in my search, but I was trying to throw her off a bit), etc. I was torn between these Toffee Almond Sandies and another recipe that I ended up making the next week. I finally decided these might ship a little better, so I made the Sandies.

After reading some of the comments on the Web site, I opted to not flatten them with a fork (that screams peanut butter cookie to me, and I thought Meg might not appreciate that) and I took note that some people used pecans instead of almonds, but I wanted to get the almond flavoring/almond punch in there, so I stayed with the original. I didn't have any wheat flour on hand, so I used all all-purpose flour.

Something else I learned as I was making these: This recipe makes A LOT of cookies. I sent some to Meg and took a ton to work and still had leftovers.

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 cup confectioners' sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
2 eggs
1 teaspoon almond extract
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups chopped almonds
1 (6 ounce) package English toffee bits
Additional sugar

Directions


1. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add oil, eggs and extract; mix well. Combine flours, baking soda, cream of tartar and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in almonds and toffee bits.


2. Shape into 1-in. balls; roll in sugar. Place on ungreased baking sheets and flatten with a fork. Bake at 350 degrees F for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned.


Source: allrecipes.com