These super soft baked fudge cookies are filled with butterscotch and sweet salty toffee bits. Top with sea salt to make a totally irresistible chocolate cookie!
Butterscotch, toffee, chocolate, and a little sea salt for good measure. It goes without saying that these butterscotch toffee chocolate fudge cookies are… irresistible. We add milk to the dough, so there’s no egg needed.
For more egg-free cookie recipes, try shortbread cookies or pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Here are all of our egg-free baking recipes.
Craving more toffee-inspired treats? Try these brown butter toffee chocolate chip cookies and salted vanilla toffee cookies?
Butterscotch Toffee Chocolate Fudge Cookies
- Prep Time: 3 hours, 30 minutes
- Cook Time: 15 minutes
- Total Time: 3 hours, 45 minutes
- Yield: 20 cookies
- Category: Cookies
- Method: Baking
- Cuisine: American
Description
These super soft baked fudge cookies are filled with butterscotch and sweet salty toffee bits. Top with sea salt to make a totally irresistible chocolate cookie!
Ingredients
- 1 and 1/4 cups (156g) all-purpose flour (spooned & leveled)
- 2/3 cup (55g) unsweetened natural cocoa powder
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup (8 Tbsp; 113g) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
- 1/2 cup (100g) granulated sugar
- 1/2 cup (100g) packed light brown sugar
- 1 and 1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1/4 cup (60ml) milk (we use almond milk, but any milk works)
- 3/4 cup (135g) butterscotch morsels
- 3/4 cup Heath English Toffee Bits ‘O Brickle
- optional: sea salt for sprinkling
Instructions
- Whisk the flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt together until combined. Set aside.
- In a large bowl using a handheld or stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, beat the butter for 1 minute on medium speed until completely smooth and creamy. Add the granulated sugar and brown sugar and beat on medium high speed until fluffy and light in color. Beat in the vanilla on high speed. Scrape down the sides and bottom of the bowl as needed.
- On low speed, slowly mix the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients until combined. The cookie dough will be thick. Switch to high speed and beat in the milk, then the butterscotch and toffee. The cookie dough will be sticky. Cover dough tightly with aluminum foil or plastic wrap and chill for at least 3 hours and up to 3 days. Chilling is mandatory for this cookie dough. I always chill mine overnight.
- Remove cookie dough from the refrigerator and allow to sit at room temperature for 20 minutes—if the cookie dough chilled longer than 3 hours, let it sit at room temperature for about 30 minutes. This makes the cookie dough easier to scoop and roll.
- Preheat oven to 350°F (177°C). Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats. Set aside.
- Scoop and roll balls of dough, about 1.5 Tablespoons of dough each (I use this medium cookie scoop), into balls. Place on the baking sheets.
- Bake the cookies for 12-13 minutes. My oven has hot spots and yours may too, so be sure to rotate the pan once during bake time. The baked cookies will look extremely soft in the centers when you remove them from the oven. Allow to cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheet. During this time, you can press a few more butterscotch morsels into the top of the warm cookies—this is just for looks. You can also sprinkle with a little sea salt as well. The cookies will slightly deflate as you let them cool. Transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.
Notes
- Make Ahead & Freezing Instructions: Cookies stay fresh covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. Baked cookies freeze well for up to 3 months. You can make the cookie dough and chill it in the refrigerator for up to 2-3 days. Allow to come to room temperature then continue with step 5. Unbaked cookie dough balls freeze well for up to 3 months. Bake frozen cookie dough balls for an extra minute, no need to thaw. Read my tips and tricks on how to freeze cookie dough.
- Special Tools (affiliate links): Electric Mixer (Handheld or Stand) | Baking Sheet | Silicone Baking Mat or Parchment Paper | Medium Cookie Scoop | Cooling Rack
- Butterscotch Morsels & Toffee Bits: Feel free to replace the butterscotch morsels with chocolate chips, a swap many readers make when they are looking for double chocolate chip cookies. You can skip the toffee bits, too. If skipping the toffee bits, you can increase the amount of butterscotch morsels (or chocolate chips) to 1 – 1.5 cups.
- Be sure to check out my top 5 cookie baking tips AND these are my 10 must-have cookie baking tools.
What happened? I made the recipe and chilled for 3 hours. Dough was think and cookies didn’t spread at all when I cooked them.
Hi Eryn, I wonder if the dough was simply too thick. Did you spoon and level the flour? Over-measuring the flour will produce a thicker dough. If you want to try the recipe again, you can skip the dough chilling.
Such a fun new cookie recipe! Made for teen athletes for their study hour and they were a success! Thank you.
What’s the best bowl to use when chilling cookie dough in the refrigerator? Glass? Plastic? Steel?
Hi Linda! We usually use whatever bowl the cookies dough has been mixed in – any kind works 🙂
I made these the other day for people at work (and for unhoused folks in a sack lunch) and everyone loved them! As did I; I ate more than I should have.
I love all your recipes <3333
I baked these at 8pm yesterday. I came down this morning to put the rest in the cookie jar and they were gone! Yes, they were super thick when I added the milk and then the chips, so I was dubious. But I let the dough rest for about 4 hours in the fridge and let it sit about 30 minutes before shaping and baking. They came out perfect. I will definitely make these again. Thank you!!
I love these cookies. They taste amazing. One problem I have when making them is that they spread in the oven. So when they are done baking they are very very thin and bubbly on the edges. I am very careful when I measure everything. And I have an oven thermostat so I know my temp is correct. I also have tried freezing the balls and then baking directly in the oven. And also chilling over night in the fridge and then baking. Nothing seems to fix this problem.
Hi Stephanie! Make sure start with proper room temperature butter (it’s cooler than we think). You can always add a couple extra Tbs of flour to the dough to prevent spreading. Here’s more tips for keeping cookies from spreading!
I loved the flavor of these cookies! I did freeze them like I do many cookies but something weird happened. They absolutely did not spread it all. Any ideas?
Hi Heather, Thanks for giving this recipe a try! When cookies aren’t spreading, it usually means that there’s too much dry ingredient (flour) soaking up all the liquid. When measuring flour, use the spoon & level method. Do not scoop the flour out of the container/bag. Doing so leaves you with excess flour in the cookie dough. And if you are ever in the middle of baking a batch and the cookies still aren’t spreading, you can remove them from the oven, and use a spoon to slightly flatten them out before returning them to the oven. Hope these tips help for next time!
This is a great base for cookies! Butterscotch and toffee are really good and sometimes we use peanut butter chips. They’re so soft!
These are SO GOOD!! I chill the dough for 3 hours and they’re so thick and fudgey after baking.
I make a different dessert every week and I just wanted to write and say that these cookies rock! The combination of the chocolate, butterscotch chips and toffee bits give makes these cookies taste delicious. I left the dough in the refrigerator for 8 1/2 hours and then let it cool for over 30 minutes as this recipe instructed. The dough was was still crumbly so I couldn’t use a cookie scoop but I was able to mold the cookies into balls by hand.
So disappointed! I was really excited about trying these and I followed/double-checked the recipe exactly. But it never formed a dough. Even after mixing in the milk, it was a dry and crumbly mixture. I know the comments are saying there doesn’t need to be any egg, but this recipe definitely needs more moisture somewhere. I had to throw it all out. Possibly a typo somewhere in the recipe?
Hi Rachel! Thank you for giving this recipe a try! How are you measuring your flour? The most common culprit for dry cookies is too much flour in the dough. I recommend using the spoon-and-level method or a kitchen scale. You can read more about that here: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/how-to-measure-baking-ingredients/
Hi! Does the milk go in at the same time as the vanilla? Ty!
After. See step 3.
Hi Sally.
These look delicious.
But what makes cookies rich without the egg in it?
Where did this recipe go? The images are still there and underneath there are only the headings (directions, ingredients, etc) but no content.
Seems like it was a formatting issue. I just updated it. Thank you for catching that!
These cookies are delish, and turned out beautifully! I followed the gram/mL measurements instead of the cup measurements. I love the combination of flavors–the chocolate with the butterscotch and the crunchy toffee pieces. It was a great combo. For those who would like to double the batch, a full bag of Heath bits equals the 1 1/2 cups you’d need. I appreciate the make ahead tip! Great cookie recipe! Thank you, Sally!