Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies

This is probably my most requested recipe.  It's easy and my mom has been making these forever.  She probably got it from the back of a Bisquick box and that's okay.

The recipe makes a very small batch and I routinely double it easily.  Here it goes.

Ingredients:

This is what coarse crumbs look like.

Preheat your oven to 375. 
1 box of vanilla instant pudding (or cooked, I've found that it doesn't really matter)
1 cup Bisquick baking mix
1/4 cup of shortening (Crisco)
1 egg
1/4 cup milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1/2 cup of semisweet chocolate chips

Look!  It's a bunch o' stuff in a bowl!

In a mixing bowl, combine the pudding, the Bisquick and the shortening and cut them together until the mixture is coarse crumbs.


In another bowl, lightly beat the egg, milk and vanilla together. 

Add egg mixture to pudding mixture.  If it's too dry, add a little more milk, 1 tablespoon at a time.  Mix in the chips. 

You could just eat it like this if you really wanted to.

The original recipe says to drop the dough by rounded teaspoon onto an ungreased cookie sheet.  That's fine and will make bite-sized cookies.  I use a small scoop rather than a teaspoon so my cookies are 3 or 4 biters and bake into lovely little rounded mounds.


Bake for 10-12 minutes.  Using scoop, yields about 18 cookies

This is my attempt to be artsy!

Don't freak out!  These will not look like "regular" chocolate chip cookies.  They'll stay really poofy and they don't spread out.  When done they'll be high, rounded cookies with a yellowish color and a fluffy, cake-like interior.  They're much lighter than regular chocolate chip cookies.

Now, since my mom gave me this recipe, I've done some improvising.

Instead of vanilla pudding, use chocolate.  Go down to 3 tablespoons of milk and add 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup to the egg mixture.  Now you get Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies.

The original and the chocolate variation, fresh out of the oven.