Sad Shibow and Friends Make One Smart Cookie

My friends are geniuses. I like to keep good company in the hopes that one day I will absorb these smarts through osmosis or telepathy or science or something. Remember what I said about trying to get smart? I need me some knowledge work.

Anyway, my friend Jeff has been wanting to make potato chip chocolate chip cookies, which are exactly what you think they are. The twins and I have a list of activities we are trying to complete before we all drop dead, and these cookies are pretty high up on the list. I’m not sure if we’re all convinced we’re going to expire by the end of the summer or something, but we’ve been making good progress on the list so far. This post got really dark really quickly.

Um…

Oh, also, the other night Jeremy and I went running (it’s this new “thing” I’m trying that involves Usher songs, an inhaler and a lot of trash talk about how awesomely fast I am) and then spontaneously decided we were going to buy a watermelon and fill it with vodka (this was also on our list). We cut a hole in the watermelon, stuck a bottle of Smirnoff into said hole, and waited a few days. Here’s what it looks like. I’m not going to walk you through the whole process. I’ll tell you why in a minute.

Basically the vodka is supposed to seep into the entire watermelon, so that when it’s cut up and scooped out, you get a sweet, spiked treat. That’s what’s supposed to happen. What actually happened was both boys got chunks of pure watermelon while I consumed globs of vodka that had the texture of watermelon. Then I gagged and completely freaked out. We’re pretty sure that the vodka only made it to the top halves of the watermelon. So maybe next time ladies do not go first.

Anyway, that sucked. What did not suck, on the other hand, was our crazy Everything Cookie. I don’t know what else to call it really. Aren’t there times when you’re sitting around watching The Soup and wishing you could shove those potato chips you’re chomping on into a cookie? Yes you do. And yes we did. And si se puede.

See the above picture? That is basically the recipe for the absolute perfect cookie. Seriously, this took, like, hundreds of seconds of planning. Here’s what went into our process: the three of us rolled into Stop and Shop, called out junk food we enjoy, bought said junk food, debated buying beer too, decided not to buy the beer because we needed to eat our vodka watermelon (we didn’t find out it sucked until later), and stood in the checkout line looking like a trio of college kids aiming to pack on the freshman fifteen. Welcome to the good life. Let’s get started.

Everything Cookie

1 3/4 cup of all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon of baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of salt

3/4 cup of softened butter

1 cup of brown sugar

1 egg

1/2 teaspoon of vanilla extract

1 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

2 Almond Joy bars, broken into 1/2 inch chunks (Jeff’s absolutely genius addition, but if you’re not into coconut you can use your favorite candy bar)

3/4 cup of crushed potato chips (we used Kettle Brand Twice Baked Potato Chips, highly recommended)

3/4 cup of crushed pretzels

This dough’s going to need about an hour to chill, so wait to preheat the oven. Cream together the butter and sugar in a large bowl. When fully creamed, beat in the egg, then the vanilla. In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, then fold into the wet ingredients. When that’s mixed, fold in the chocolate chips and then go crazy with the chips, pretzels and Almond Joys. You can even shove your hand into the bag of potato chips and start crushing them over the bowl. I have a feeling I probably said something like “this is for my homies who couldn’t be here” while I sprinkled some over the bowl, because I am messed up like that.

Chill the bowl of dough in the refrigerator for about an hour. Preheat the oven to 375°F. Drop tablespoon-size balls of dough onto a cookie sheet, then pop into the oven for 11-13 minutes. Cool. Eat. Repeat.

I don’t think I can adequately express how much I loved these cookies. These cookies were as good as the watermelon was bad. These were my Glen Hansard of cookies. If Kanye saw Chips Ahoy! getting an award for Greatest Cookie, he’d interrupt its acceptance speech to say the Everything Cookie was the best cookie of all time. Of all time!

Was that last one too much? Maybe it was too much. But it’s true. And I love me some Kanye references.