Toffee Cookie Bars

A few weeks ago, I saw these on my friend's blog, Desperate Chefwife, and I was so excited to make them. She is studying culinary arts in college, so she has good ideas and knows a lot of those "professional" tricks that I don't really know... or follow sometimes. Check out her blog for some really great recipes. 

Her recipe for these cookie bars specifically called for "unsalted butter." Actually, many recipes that I find say that and I usually just ignore it and use salted butter or margarine anyway. Because a few different recipes that I was planning to make (including this blueberry struesel muffin recipe) called for it, I decided to spring for a pound of unsalted butter and see how I liked it. I also did some research online and found a number of forums and websites where people tout the benefits of controlling the amount of salt in a recipe by using unsalted butter. After trying it out, I have decided to continue to use regular, salted butter in my recipes. I feel like the extra salt adds a good flavor and it just isn't worth it to me to worry about a half teaspoon of salt in my recipes. Still, these were still great, even without the extra salt that normally would have been added because of the butter.

1 cup butter or margarine

1/2 cup sugar

1 cup brown sugar

2 tsp vanilla

2 eggs

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp baking soda

2 1/4 cup flour

1/2 cup chocolate chips

1 1/2 cup toffee bits

Cream butter and sugar, then stir in vanilla, eggs and salt. Then add baking soda and flour, stirring until completely combined. Stir in chocolate chips and toffee bits. Spread dough in a jellyroll pan. Bake at 350° for about 12-18 minutes or until the crust begins to turn golden.