Oatmeal Raisin Toffee Cookies

When I was looking for recipes to make for Meghan's birthday treat, I came across two with toffee that sounded delicious. While I opted to make the Toffee Almond Sandies to send to her, I decided I needed to try the others at some point in the future, too.

I made them a few weeks later and took them to our May craft gathering and work, where they were devoured. They're very yummy cookies, although mine seemed rather sticky, and many of them didn't come off my cookie sheets in singular cookie form (I had a bowl full of cookies that looked like they had seen better days by the end of my baking).

I definitely don't think these would have traveled well to Arizona, but they certainly do taste good!

Ingredients

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup raisins
1 cup crushed toffee candy

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease cookie sheets.

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar and white sugar. Beat in the eggs, one at a time then stir in the vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and cinnamon; stir into the creamed mixture. Blend in the oatmeal and toffee bits. Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto the prepared cookie sheet.

3. Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely.

Source: allrecipes.com

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