Recipe Friday: How the Cookie Crumbles

I like to bake cookies and I am pretty good at it. Of course, who's not? It's not hard. I have kept Precious Angel supplied ever since he's had teeth. Between his mother and me, we saw to it that he became a regular little food snob early on. Sushi, Thai, Middle Eastern. Indian. He would eat anything and it had better be high quality too.

Or so I thought.

Back to the cookies. I made sure he didn't turn his nose up at anything but chocolate chip, the way some kids do. He loved them all--cherry almond bars with a shortbread crust, peanut butter flavored with real maple syrup (grade B if I could find it), oatmeal with brandy and dried cranberries, coffee brownies with butterscotch chips. For special times I made tiny turnovers of cheddar cheese pastry filled with homemade date pecan jam. Even my sugar cookies were rolled in turbinado sugar.

So last Christmas Nestle came out with some special edition chocolate mint chips. I don't like chocolate mint much, but The Guy and Precious Angel do, so I bought a whole sackful. Then I didn't know what to do with them. The recipe on the back of the bag was for candy and I didn't want to do that. If you want chocolate mint candy, the stores are full of Andee's Mints. So I mentioned my plight to Katherine Bone one day because true friends talk about  boring things. She suggested that I get a chocolate cake mix and make cookies from it, as she had done with her kids when they were small. I did. Whipped up the cookies, disseminated them, and forgot about it.

Fast forward several months. Precious Angel is away at school wanting a care package--cheese straws and cookies. What kind of cookies you ask. My special brownies that are so moist becasue they are made with brown sugar? No. Maybe the pecan coconut ones that are perfectly toasty and crisp? Oh, no. And not the white chocolate raspberry bars either.

He said, "Can I have those awesome chocolate mint things?!?"

At least they are easy. I used chocolate fudge mix and, of course, the mint chips. I added some vanilla because I just had to. I don't think it mattered. I also made mine big and baked them 14 minutes.

Cake Mix Cookies

Ingredients

• 1 box any flavor cake mix
• 2 eggs
• 1/2 cup oil

Instructions

1. Add 1/2 cup oil and two eggs to one box of cake mix. Add chips, nuts, and flavorings if desired.

2. Drop by teaspoonfuls on a cookie sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 minutes.