Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies

My wife is an avid user of allrecipes.com, and found a really good chocolate chip cookie recipe. You can find this recipe under the title Award Winning Soft Chocolate Chip Cookies. We made a slight variation, as my wife is not a big fan of walnuts. We used pecans instead. One of the cool things about allrecipes.com is that you can change the serving size and it will automatically adjust your ingredient list. The default is 72 servings, so be sure to adjust as needed if you check out the page.

Without further ado, here is the recipe:

• 2-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 cup butter, softened
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 (3.4 ounce) package instant vanilla pudding mix
• 2 eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• 1 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

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.

Thanks go to Debbi Borsick for posting this to allrecipes.com. As you can see from the above picture, our batch came out really well. These are among the best chocolate chip cookies my wife has baked.