If you have been cooking for any number of years, you probably have a few recipes that are like old friends you count on when you’re tired and frazzled. They never leave you hanging.
This simple cookie is one I turn to when I need a guaranteed win. I make them if I have to dash off a big batch of cookies after work for book club or if I need a pick-me-up treat after a long workweek.
How easy are they to make? A child taught this recipe to me. When I was in school, Katy Brickson Juneau moved to my hometown and we became fast friends. She introduced me to the cookies because she and her siblings would make them after school. They called the recipe Cookie Brittle.
The dough comes together in one bowl. You add the butter, sugar, vanilla extract and salt and whisk until its fluffy. Then, you dump the flour in and use a fork or your fingers, mixing until you get crumbly dough that comes together when you press it with your fingers.
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That crumbled dough is dumped onto a 9-by-13-inch, rimmed sheet pan and then pressed it into a thin layer — edge to edge. Katy and her crew would sprinkle the chocolate chips evenly over the dough, press them in and run the whole thing in the oven, and we’d have cookies in about half an hour — start to finish.
To me, they are like a poor man’s shortbread cookie with a wonderfully buttery finish. I love them because there is no rolling, no chilling, no cookie cutters.
You can be fancy and measure and score the slab to slice out 24 perfect cookies or stretch that and go for 48 bite-size sweets. Or you can cut the slab into bigger pieces and then break them up into irregular chunks.
I have made slight tweaks to the recipe over the years. The buttery dough is so simple that it is almost a blank canvas for flavor play. I’ve subbed in almond and coconut extract.
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Sometimes, I press in the dough and then section it off, making various kinds of cookies in one pan, drawing on whatever is in my pantry: chocolate chips in one part, butterscotch in another and pecan pieces or pistachios in a third.
Around Christmastime, I like to add peppermint extract to the dough and then press a mixture of crushed peppermint candies and chocolate chips in before baking.
Another favorite winter-flavor combo is to make the cookies with butterscotch chips in place of the chocolate and replace the extract with a shot of rum — could not do that as a kid. (Find both variations at the end of the recipe.)
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