Adding Nuts To Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

Adding Nuts To Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies
Helen McMahon for Expert Village. We're ready to add the nuts to our mixture now for our Toll House cookies. Traditionally, the original Toll House chocolate chip recipe calls for chopped walnuts. That's what we're going to use, but I do want you to know that there are many alternatives. Chopped walnuts are wonerful in Toll House cookies. For a change of taste and texture, pistachio nuts. You can buy them in the shell and then take them out yourself or you can buy them already shelled. You probably would want to chop them a little bit smaller. We're going to use the walnuts. I have 2 differnt kinds here. I find the most convenient if you're making cookies a lot, is to buy them already cut into small pieces. These are called baking pieces and these are from Trader Joe's. The come in a one pound bag that's resealable to keep them nice and fresh. Or you can buy walnuts that are whole and chop them yourself. We'll take out a few. It's not always possible to buy the small baking ones. In this case, you would just chop them into pieces. Whatever size you'll like that will be good for the size of cookies you're making. You can also of course, buy walnuts in the shell. It could be a nice family occasion if the children our helping wth cookie baking day. They sometimes enjoy cooking them with the shells that they have shelled so that everybody in the family has a chance to participate in the cookie baking. It's especially nice in the holidays and when the family is gathered around the fireplace and the kitchen generating all those nice Christmas memories. Well in this case, we're going to have both the walnuts that I just chopped up and the ones that I pour out of the bag. And believe me, it's a lot easier to just pour them out of the bag. If you're going to do a lot of baking and you can find them already chopped up, that certainly would be what I would recommend. Once again, you just dump them into your container with the other ingredients until they're well incorporated. Make sure we stop and scrape that bowl and scrape those beaters so that we'll be sure that every cookie has a bit of chopped walnut.