{C is for cookie}

My most favorite cookie that is. 

Oatmeal chocolate chip cookies!

These cookies are phenomenal. Maybe it's the pseudo-healthy oatmeal ingredient that makes me feel a little less guilty. Maybe it's the chocolate chips which I allow to overflow in the measuring cup before pouring them in. When it comes to chocolate chips, I always opt for the more the merrier. I mean come on, think of all that air space between the chips when you measure them out! So I try to even it out.

Cookies are a difficult one for me. When baking, I tend to lean towards treats like cupcakes, cakes & brownies to satisfy my sugary cravings. I love cookies, and I love the idea of cookies, but don't often venture into the cookie section of a cookbook to find my evening recipe. Obviously Christmas is a different story. But it's not Christmas, so my point still stands.

Enter secret ingredient. I first tried a pudding injected cookie my senior year in college, when my friend Sara made the most chewy, melty, chocolate chip cookies I had ever tried. I think I inhaled three in the span of 35 seconds, and have not been able to get over the taste since. After demanding she share the recipe with me for the crack choco cookies, she told me it was just a normal recipe with the addition of this elementary school lunch box filler. I was intrigued. 

Safe to say that curiosity did not kill the cookie. More like made the cookie the best cookie ever. I have no idea if I got the recipe ratios right, or if I should have added more flour to make up for the vanilla pudding, but it's whatever. I'm just happy they made it into the oven at all, after several sessions of needing to "clean" the utensils, and "taste test" to make sure the batter tasted okay. Of course it did. 

All goodness. This was right after I took them out of the oven, so the top is a little gooey. This picture alone should tell you how good they smell/how antsy I was to try it! Scalding hot or not it was going to be eaten. Surprisingly too, the cookies got BETTER as they sat in a tuperware on my counter. Aging like wine. How fancy.