junk in da trunk

I bake a lot- about once a week (sometimes twice).  I think that this is baffling to some, but it's not to me.  When I first started grad school, some version of the following was not an uncommon refrain: "I wish I had time to bake." This really bothered me until one day (for some reason), I was telling one of my professors of this frustration, and he said "The thing is that when people think about baking, they're thinking about themselves baking, not you.  They're thinking about how long it would take them to bake something, not you." And this made me feel infinitely better.  It's true.  I enjoy baking, and it's not time consuming for me.  Just like anything else, with practice, you get better and more efficient.  

The upside to baking is that when you have a craving for say, brownies, you just go to the kitchen to bake them.  And they are significantly better than anything you'd buy in the store.

For me, the downside to being a proficient baker is that sometimes I just don't feel like baking the easy stuff- like chocolate chip cookies.  Sometimes I want more of a challenge, I want to bake something more interesting.  But I have to bake chocolate chip cookies because they are Drew's favorite and I won't let him buy them.  Correction, I won't let him buy most baked goods in the store.  The following is not an uncommon exchange in the grocery store:

Drew:  "oh look, (insert macaroons, cookies, whatever)." 

Me:  "Don't buy it, I can make it for you."

And sometimes I do, but sometimes I don't and I just make something else.  Except for chocolate chip cookies.  Most of the time, I make those, despite finding them to be a too simple and uninteresting baking project.  And so I am continuously trying to find interesting ways to spice up chocolate chip cookies.  Fortunately, Drew is open to variations and does not require chocolate chip cookies in their purest form.  

Enter the treat I bought myself the other day: Baking Out Loud by Hedy Goldsmith.  I checked out this cookbook from the library before purchasing it.  It's a fun, interesting cookbook and I'm drawn to the pictures (despite being a grad student, I apparently still prefer picture books).  Goldsmith shows you how to make stuff you'd normally buy in the store, like candy bars (I've already tried the peanut butter cups and the snickers bars), and she adds some nice twists to the classics (which is why I bought the cookbook).  Her recipe for chocolate chip cookies is called "Junk in Da Trunk."  The "junk" is mostly chocolate chips, but then you add anything you want.  Here, I've followed her recipe for the most part and added malted milk balls, butterscotch chips, pecans, walnuts, pretzels, and potato chips.      

That's a lot of junk.  The cookies are pretty big, but they have to be so as to accommodate all the junk.  

The cookies are soft, and contrast nicely with the crunch of the pretzels, potato chips, and malted milk balls. I made a double batch and put most of them in the freezer so Drew can eat them whenever he'd like.  Okay, that's kind of a lie.  I really made a double batch so I'd be off the hook for baking chocolate chip cookies for a while.