I recently spoke at the Keen Digital Summit about Food Styling (check out my 10 Food Styling Tips to Make Your Food Photographs Delicious). I really wanted to make something for the attendees of my session. Because most of the bloggers, small business owners and publisists that came to the conference were from out of town, I decided to make a "Nashville Cookie" to showcase some of Nashville's best ingredients.

I took my original Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe to a whole new level by adding Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. chocolate and Nashville Toffee Company toffee. With a couple of key alterations to the directions and the ingredients, I ended up with a soft chewy cookie that I think does a great job of showcasing locally made products from the city that I love so much.

I handed out about 75 individually wrapped cookies at the conference and got so many requests for the recipe that I thought that I would post it here. If you don't live in Nashville, you can buy the chocolate and toffee on the companies websites (Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. and Nashville Toffee Company). Locals can grab both at Whole Foods and I even saw Nashville Toffee in Publix yesterday.

Here's the recipe. It would be great for home-made holiday gifts—especially for family coming in from out-of-town. Show 'em what Nashville's made of!

The Nashville Cookie Ingredients: 1/2 cup of butter (1 stick) 1/2 cup of sugar 1/2 cup of brown sugar 1 tsp. pure vanilla extract 1 egg 1/2 tsp. salt 1/2 tsp. baking soda 1 1/2 cups of all purpose flour 1/4 cup chopped 67% Cacao Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. chocolate 1/4 cup chopped 75% Cacao Olive & Sinclair Chocolate Co. chocolate 1/2 cup chopped Nashville Toffee Company toffee

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Melt butter, sugar and brown sugar together in a sauce pan on the stove over a medium heat until all melted and combined. Remove pan from stovetop once mixture starts to bubble. Add vanilla and let cool completly. Once cool, put sugar/butter mixture into an electric mixer and add the egg; mix on low until combined. Add baking soda and salt. Add flour and mix on low until everything is combined. Remove bowl from mixer and stir in toffee and chocolate by hand until just combined.

Refrigerate dough for at least 30 minutes. Use a cookie scoop to scoop out dough onto cookie sheet. Press each cookie dough round down with your hand to flatten. Place in 350 degree oven for 9 minutes. Do not over bake. Makes approx. 12 cookies.

You can also scoop out the cookie dough, flatten and place in freezer. You can pull out individual pieces of cookie dough and bake straight from freezer … or just eat frozen dough (like I do—no judgement).

I'm excited to be working with another one of my favorite local Nashville ingredients this week—Goo Goo Clusters. Can't wait to show you what I come up with!