Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

I don't really have much of a sweet tooth... I'm more of a salty, crunchy person, though every now and then a well done chocolate chip cookie is worth every granule of sugar and butter inside! There is an upcoming "Dinner in the Barracks" for some of tho Marines who work with Travis and live in the barracks... since they usually eat whatever the mess hall is serving that day, the craving for home cooked foods can be pretty intense. The wives of the squadron, including me, like to play mother hen and take care of them,
though I tend to cook more for my corpsmen at work since I see them every day. Both the squadron Marines and my corpsmen work so hard, and being on a desert island and life here can be pretty tedious and emotionally draining- it's really important to support each other to keep our spirits up.

I saw this pin on Pinterest (keeping up with my trend lately of cooking what I pin) and knew it was a recipe I wanted to try. I tend to prefer chewy chocolate chip cookies- the recipe on the back of the chocolate chip bag is darn near perfect for me. However, these cookies were easy to make, didn't require the batter to be chilled, and turned out very soft and almost with a pound cake texture. I did not have semisweet chips on hand so I used milk chocolate- which was a mistake. Definitely was too sweet for me once baked in the dough. I honestly think dark chocolate chips would be absolutely perfect and would balance out the already sweet dough. With a #60 disher (2 tsp), portion control is easy since it will drop 1" balls onto the cookie sheet for you.

I had to work fast as I was losing light very very quickly- I was able to shoot these on our patio table right as the sun was slipping below the horizon, which was lucky since they did not respond well to the fluorescent light in our kitchen. 

Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

as seen on AllRecipes

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, I did not include in this batch)

Preheat oven to 350º. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and instant pudding mix. Set aside.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar. Beat in the eggs one at a time, then add vanilla. Blend in the flour mixture, one cup at a time, fully incorporating each addition of flour before adding another. Finally, stir in the chocolate chips (and nuts). Drop cookies by rounded spoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets- silpats work well for rotating batches on the same cookie sheet.

Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven. Edges should be golden brown.

(My oven did perfectly at 11 minutes).

Cookies will keep in an airtight container up to 1 week. They probably won't last that long!