After a recent dinner with my new friend Amy (who I met through this food blog - Hi Amy!), I realized that I should bake more. I don’t bake very much because I don’t want to have a fat ass. However, Amy mentioned that since she and her husband work at home or on the road, she can’t bake because she doesn’t have an office to take the leftovers to. Without an office to send excess sweets to, the baker herself is in danger of packing on the pounds, right?

Amy’s comment made me realize that I have the ultimate baking situation in my life: my husband makes video games for a living. This means that every day he goes to an office full of men… men who can eat a ton of brownies or cookies or cakes without a moment’s thought of the scale and any fleshy consequences. So, I’ve decided that I’m going to take advantage of this fortuitous situation and bake more often.

I started my new baking adventures with a recipe that I learned about from Lisa at Comfort Foods. How could anyone resist the title of this recipe…? It’s called Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies. They have a secret ingredient which keeps them super-soft and fluffy: Instant Pudding Mix. I love soft cookies. Hard cookies aren’t worth the calories, as far as I’m concerned.

My husband loved these cookies so much that he didn’t even want to take them to work and share them. In fact, we had a fight about his adamance on this issue. I just can’t have cookies in the house without eating every single one as quickly as possible. Apparently, my train of thought goes something like this… “If I’m going to eat them all eventually anyway, I might as well eat them all right now, as soon as humanly possible!” And then I inhale them. Nope, I can’t let myself do that. I’ve spent too much money on cute-as-hell jeans lately to ruin my fashionable aspirations with overindulgence in baked goods.

So, if you have some weight to gain or an office full of hungry 20-something men to send them off to, now’s the perfect time to make these delicious chocolate chip cookies!

Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies
Submitted by: Debbi Borsick

Prep Time: approx. 15 Minutes.
Cook Time: approx. 12 Minutes.
Ready in: approx. 1 Hour 40 Minutes.
Makes 6 dozen (72 servings).

4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
2 cups butter, softened
1 1/2 cups packed brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 (3.4 ounce) packages
instant vanilla pudding mix
4 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
4 cups semisweet chocolate chips
2 cups chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions
1 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift
together the flour and baking soda, set aside.
2 In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown
sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the instant pudding mix until
blended. Stir in the eggs and vanilla. Blend in the flour
mixture. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips and nuts. Drop
cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets.
3 Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges
should be golden brown.

My Notes:

• I only put half of the chocolate chips called for. I love chocolate and usually would never skimp on it, but I didn’t miss the extra chips in this recipe. My husband said he liked having less chips because you could taste the fluffy, soft texture of the cookies more.
• I like bigger cookies. I made a full-batch of these, but the larger size meant that I got about 48 cookies out of the batter rather than 72.
• I don’t think this is my end-all, be-all chocolate chip cookie recipe, but I’m definitely keeping it in my recipe box for future use. The best part about these cookies is that they stay perfectly soft for days.