They're chewy. But if you subbed chocolate chips, then they wouldn't be Hermits.

Martha, Can you tell there is coffee in the cookies? My mother used to make a cookie that I loved as a child. It was a soft drop cookie with black walnuts and raisins. From describing to bakers, they say it's probably just a brown sugar drop cookie. I hadn't thought about it for a long time, but your Hermit recipe brought it to mind. I've never tried to duplicate it, but may give your Hermits a try.

I used pecans but you certainly could use black walnuts. The cookie doesn't taste like coffee if that's what you mean. I think it just enhances the flavor. Do give the Hermits a try. Do you have a source for black walnuts? They definitely would add a different flavor to the cookie because their flavor is so storng (me, who grew up thinking the only nuts to use in cooking was black walnuts because we had a black walnut tree out back and so nuts were free, saying that)

My mother always made these with black walnuts as they were my late father's favorite. SO good...

My grandmother had a HUGE black walnut tree in her back yard in NW Arkansas, and every Christmas, she would fill a quart jar with walnuts she'd picked for my father. With black walnuts, that's a labor of love! Hardest nut on earth to actually get to the nut!

When we lived in St Louis, there was a huge one on our terrace. Daddy would take them and put them in a burlap bag and then drive the cars over them repeatedly until the shell was well cracked. Worked pretty well!

oh, Mom always left the nuts in the drive and we'd drive over them, and then they got picked up and put in a bucket on our unheated back porch. When she needed nuts for a recipe, she'd hand my brother and I a hammer and a bowl. "SHE" who was so afraid that we'd hurt ourself on so many things, gave us a hammer to try to crack nuts -- you hold the nut with your hand and whack! Looking back I couldn't believe she did that but I must admit I don't remember ever hitting my fingers! (Nor my brothers) -- go figure!