Chocolate Chip Cookies

I have many life-long goals.  One is to write a novel.  Another has been to find the PERFECT chocolate chip cookie recipe.  I have tried several different recipes in search for a nice, big, fluffy cookie.  It seems like every recipe produces flat cookies.  I am very happy to report....I! Have! Found! It!  Seriously, the best...EVER!  It's one I found on Allrecipes.com, and like always, I made my own changes to make it perfect.

I mean, LOOK AT THESE!

What a mountain of GOODNESS!

I kept thinking about keeping this as my "secret recipe."  But...I just couldn't.  It's too good not to share.  So, fear not.  Here you go.  

Ingredients:

2 1/4 cups flour

1 tsp. baking soda

2 sticks (one cup) butter* (IT HAS TO BE THE REAL STUFF!)

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

1 large packet of vanilla flavored instant pudding mix (I think it's 5.8 oz)

2 eggs

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

chopped nuts, optional

Steps:

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Sift together flour and baking soda.

2. Cream together butter, white sugar, and brown sugar.

*Now, this is going to sound weird.  I got it in my mind to make cookies last night.  Even after I went to check for ingredients and found I only had 1 1/2 sticks of butter.  This was not going to stop me!  In my fridge, I found a small container of cream cheese frosting left over from Justin's cupcakes.  Well, I thought to myself....that frosting had a lot of butter in it...  The texture is pretty similar....  It couldn't hurt....  What the heck....  So, I scooped a few big spoons of the left over frosting into the bowl to make up for what I was lacking in butter.  Sooo good!  Just shows...improvisation in the kitchen (even when baking) can produce amazing results!

*Another side note on butter, I've found using cold butter, straight from the fridge, helps cookies keep their shape.  Room temperature butter seems to make them slide out and become big flat Frisbee cookies.  Maybe it's in my head...but I always take it straight out of the fridge and put it directly in my mixer.

Back to the recipe...

3.Now, beat in the pudding mix.  Then add eggs and vanilla.

4. Slowly add flour mixture 1/4 cup at a time until completely mixed.  Your dough should be fairly dry.  If it looks really wet or sticky, your dough needs more flour.  This is another common problem that causes flat cookies.  I've even added oatmeal to my chocolate chip cookie dough before to "dry it up" and it was delicious!

5. Now, stir in chocolate chips and nuts (if you want) until mixed.  Drop by spoonfuls (about the size of a golf ball or maybe a little smaller) onto an UNGREASED cookie sheet.  If you're afraid of sticking, use parchment paper.  Cooking spray makes your dough spread out too much.  (Maybe this is in my head too...but I'm sticking to my cookie theories.)

6. Bake 10-12 minutes.  It actually took mine 15-16 minutes because I cooked 2 cookie sheets full at a time. You know how your oven cooks.  Just keep an eye on them.  When they lose that "wet" look in the center, they should be done.

There...now you have the best recipe for chocolate chip cookies....of all time!  

Now...time to write my novel.