Cookies to Share

 Baking has always been a social hobby for me.  Granted, most of the whisking, sifting, and stirring is done alone, but once the hard work is done and I'm left with a perfectly frosted cake or several dozen golden brown cookies cooling on the rack, it seems almost criminal not to share.  For me, the last step in practically every recipe is dividing the goods into tupperware or plastic bags, and bringing with me to on visits to friends and family.  This week I had a lot of people I wanted to share something sweet with, so I pulled out my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe from my favorite recipe site, allrecipes.com.  My slightly altered recipe follows:

Ingredients:

• 4 1/2 cups flour
• 2 tbs baking soda
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 cups butter at room temp
• 2 packages French Vanilla pudding mix (trust me on this one, it seems strange, but it boosts the cookies' flavor and gives them great texture)
• 4 eggs
• 4-5 cups of chocolate chips/nuts/chopped candy/etc.  

Since this recipe makes so many cookies - this batch turned out 50 fairly large ones - I decided to divide up the dough and use two different mix-ins.  For the first half I stirred in a mix of chocolate and peanut butter chips - one of my all time favorite flavor combinations. For the second I added chopped up chocolate covered toffee bars.  If PB and toffee aren't your thing, you can personalize this recipe by throwing in your own favorite candy and/or nuts chopped into chunks!
Directions:


1) Preheat your oven to 350°.

2) In a medium sized bowl, whisk or sift baking soda and flour together and set aside.

3) In a large bowl, cream both sugars and butter together.

4) Add packages of vanilla pudding, and mix well.  At this stage the batter will be on the dry side and resemble coarse crumbs.

5) Mix in eggs and vanilla.

6) Slowly mix in flour/baking soda.  At this stage the dough should be very thick.

7) Add your chunks/chips/nuts/etc!

8) Scoop heaping tablespoons of dough onto your ungreased cookie sheet, about an inch and a half apart. 

9)  Bake in preheated oven for 12 minutes, or until the edges are golden brown.  I made big cookies this time around, and they took about 14 to finish, so don't be worried if your cookies need a little more time.