For when your eyes ARE as big as your stomach, you need a cookie that’s as big as your hand!

I rarely bake…not because I don’t enjoy baked goodies, not because I’m bad at it…no I’m just lazy. But haven’t we all been hit with a chocolate chip cookie craving, where you SWEAR that you could eat an entire batch in one sitting? Or when you go to a bakery and they have cookies the size of your face and as thick as a good book that you JUST KNOW are going to be perfectly crispy on the outside while still magically being moist and chewy in the middle and so you fork over $6 to enjoy the privilege? Well those are the feelings, urges, cravings that led me to scour the internet for tips and tricks to creating a cookie the size of my hand that manages to offer the delicious goodness of Mom’s homemade recipe (aka Toll House because who didn’t make the recipe on the chocolate chip bag?).

Below you will find all the standard chocolate chip cookie ingredients, with one addition, and while I’d like to say divine intervention struck and told me to add it, I’d be lying. Like most great discoveries, this was yet another lazy moment that caused me to improvise (yes, a word oft FEARED in baking). Luckily for me, and my cookie dough, it paid off. My recipe needed 1 tablespoon of vanilla extract; I was about 2 centimeters short from topping that off when my bottle of Vanilla ran out. Now, could I have just added what I had and called it a day? YES. But I happened to have a bottle of Almond extract in my cupboard. So I did what any crazy baker does, and topped off the rest of that tablespoon with Almond and PRAYED! As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. So, could I call these Big A$$ Italian Chocolate Chip Walnut Cookies? I guess, but that’s a mouthful…and so are these cookies, so it’s a match made in your mouth (and in flavortown’s heaven).

Ingredients:

• 1 cup (2 sticks) cold butter, cubed
• 1 cup light brown sugar
• 1/2 cup granulated sugar
• 1 ALMOST FULL tablespoon vanilla extract (top off with Almond extract)
• 2 cold eggs
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 1/2 cups mini semi-sweet chocolate chips
• 4 oz (1 bar) 60% Cacao baking bar, roughly chopped (I used Ghirardelli)
• 1/2 cup finely chopped Walnuts

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 375°F. If you have a Pampered Chef stoneware bar pan, good on ya! If not, line a regular cookie sheet with parchment paper.
2. In the bowl, mix the butter and both sugars together on medium speed for 2 minutes, scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.
3. Add in the eggs, vanilla, baking powder, baking soda, and salt and mix until combined and smooth.
4. Add in the flour one cup at a time, mixing until just combined.
5. Add in the chocolate chips, chopped chocolate, and walnuts and mix until evenly incorporated.
6. Using a spoon, scoop up a large spoonful of dough that fits roughly in the palm of your hand, and place on the baking sheet. Don’t pack tightly into a ball. I managed to fit 3 cookie balls on the medium tray at a time (because I have a tiny convection oven I “lovingly” refer to as an easy bake oven)…these shouldn’t spread too much due to the cold butter, but leave space just in case. Real sized oven/pan owners should be able to fit 4 each time.
7. Bake for 15 minutes until the bottoms are lightly browned and edges are golden. The tops of the cookies will feel set, but the insides will be slightly under-baked, this is intentional! That’s how you get that chewy, gooey center.
8. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 4 minutes before transferring them to paper plate to cool completely. The paper plate will also help soak up any residual butter…1 cup man, it happens.

This recipe made 10 cookies for me…depending on the size of your hand, it could make more or less. Or you could decide to be way less savage than me, and make regular sized cookies and have wayyyy more. But my plan was to create a cookie that would leave no room for seconds; because then, when someone asks how many you had, you can proudly reply “I only had one!”

*NOTE* If you don’t like Walnuts, sub in a nut you DO like. If you don’t like nuts at all (or just can’t eat them) replace the 1/2 cup of nuts with a SECOND bar of roughly chopped baking chocolate. No such thing as to much chocolate!