Chunky Monkey Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had a bad day the other day. Actually I had a bad week. As soon as I walked through the door on that particularly bad day I preheated the oven knowing exactly what I needed. Warm chocolate chip cookies. They will always melt away my problems for at least 5 minutes.

As a little girl my mother worked part time and was home when I got off the school bus. A favorite memory of mine was getting off the bus and going into the house when it smelled like Pine Sol and chocolate chip cookies. Its weird and as I have said in previous posts...I'm weird. Supposedly my mother loved the smell of Pine Sol when she was pregnant with me and would sniff the bottle. I'm not recommending this for anyone but in this circumstance it worked out OK. So what if she thought I was retarded as a baby.

It took me years to come up with my recipe for chocolate chip cookies. I have tried Alton Brown's, Cooks Illustrated, Julia Child's, no namers. At some point I ended up combining various recipes and love the result. Victoria is a fan of these and nick named them "chunky monkey" chocolate chip cookies because of the extra chocolate chips and walnuts.

Chunky Monkey Chocolate Chip Cookies

Source: ME!

Yield: 2 dozen or so...

3/4 cup butter flavor Crisco (or margarine or a combo of margarine and shortening)

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 egg

2 1/4 cup flour

1 t. baking soda

1 t. salt

1 t. vanilla

12 oz. chocolate chips plus more if you want

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix the butter/shortening/margarine with sugars. Add egg. Gradually add dry ingredients. add vanilla. Stir in chips and nuts. Bake at 325 until the edges are golden.

I like to freeze the dough and take a few out for dessert on bad days. Or happy days too!