White Chocolate Pecan Cookies

BF and I planned on heading down to the suburbs for a friend's brother's b-day party and see his family while we were out in the burbs, so I decided to bring along some cookies. I picked out a Martha Stewart recipe from the April 2013 magazine. These cookies turned out awesome. Mine were a little smaller than instructed in the recipe, but I loved the giant hunks of white chocolate in these cookies. The only problem was that BF got the day
of the birthday party wrong...by a month...so I may have eaten more of these cookies than originally intended. Woops.

Active time: 30 min.
Total time: 1 hour
Makes 11 big cookies, or 22 average-sized cookies.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 c. all purpose flour
• 2 t. coarse salt
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1 stick plus 6 T unsalted butter, softened
• 1 1/4 c. packed dark-brown sugar
• 1/4 c. plus 2 T. granulated sugar
• 1 large egg, plus 1 large egg yolk
• 1 1/2 t. pure vanilla extract
• 8 oz. white chocolate, chopped into 1/2   or 3/4-in. pieces
• 8 oz. pecans, toasted and coarsely chopped

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees with racks in upper and lower thirds, to provide even baking of both trays. If one rack is left towards the bottom of the oven, your tray of cookies might cook too quickly. Whisk together flour, salt, and baking soda to combine.

Toast your pecans at 350 for about 5 minutes. 

Beat butter and sugars on medium speed until very light and fluffy, about 4 minutes. Beat in egg, then egg yolk, until thoroughly incorporated. Beat in vanilla, then gradually add in the flour mixture, beating until just combined. 

After the dough is combined, add in the white chocolate chunks and the pecans, and mix until just combined. 

Place scoops of the dough onto a silpat-lined baking sheet. To make giant cookies, each scoop of dough should be about 4 ounces, or 1/2 cup of dough. I used slighly less than this to make more cookies, as I didn't want mine to be too giant. 

Gently press the dough balls to flatten. Bake the cookies, rotating the pans and switching the racks halfway through to ensure even baking, about 14 minutes. Then, you eat!