M&M Chocolate Chip Cookies

I love to bake. I get it from my mom who also loves to bake and let me help her when I was a little girl. One of my favorite things to make is homemade chocolate chip cookies. Now these can be tricky. There are lots of different recipes, but I truly think that I have the best one. I have made these cookies since my oldest kids were just little ones and my youngest two weren't even born yet. In other words I have made these cookies literally hundreds of times. Truth be told we love cookies at out house so that number could really be thousands of times! Not many things beat a cookie fresh from the oven. Still warm with gooey chocolate chips to enjoy. Yum-my! This is a recipe that I do not mess with at all. The only things that I will do differently is what I add in place of the chocolate chips. I have added peanut butter chips, Reese's Pieces', Reese's Peanut Butter Cups (cut into smaller pieces) as well as other chips. Walk down the baking aisle at the store and see how many types and kinds of chips there are. One of our favorites to add to our chocolate chips is M&M's. Seasonal ones. They add a festive and fun touch to our cookies when we add red, white and blue for the 4th of July. Or red and green for Christmas. Pastel colors for Easter. Pink, red and white for Valentines Day. Fall colors for fall. We love it!

Our favorite by far though is regular old semi sweet chocolate chips. You read that right. For the best cookies you need to use semi sweet chips. Even if you are a milk chocolate girl at heart, you must use semi sweet in baking. I promise you that it will up the flavor in your cookies. Milk chocolate is too sweet when added to all the sweetness that cookie dough already contains. The milk chocolate just ups the sugar taste. Semi sweet chocolate adds a chocolate taste. Since it isn't as sweet as milk chocolate it works nicely, giving the cookies a better quality taste. If you don't believe my try it. Or go buy cookies at your local or grocery bakery. Ask them what type of chips they use. Semi sweet!

When my oldest son was just a toddler I came upon this recipe quite by accident. I don't even remember how I got it. This was in the days before the everyone had the internet, so I most likely found the recipe in a magazine. The first time I made it, it was a disaster! I substituted one of the items that I didn't have for one that I did and that did not work! That is how I found out that if it calls for Crisco, don't use margarine instead. The consistency difference is huge! The cookies completely flattened out when I baked them. They basically just melted into one cookie sheet sized thin crisps. Thankfully I didn't give up there. Next time I went to the store, Butter Flavored Crisco made it into the cart. My favorite chocolate chip cookie is the Crisco Chocolate Chip Cookie. The recipe is actually on the container of Crisco! But just in case yours doesn't, here is the best cookie recipe ever!