The kids were off today, but it wasn't because of the snow. Although I wonder if school would even have been called off because it wasn't sunny. But that's just snarky.

I wanted to go to Costco today and get that errand done, but I'm glad I decided to stay put. There wasn't a lot of snow, but it did cause a forty-vehicle pile-up not far from here. Even if I didn't have any trouble driving to and from Costco, I would've been caught up in the traffic caused by the accident on my way home. Instead, I got some good cleaning done, got the girls' laundry done, did the downstairs vacuuming and ran a load of dishes.

Then I did this:



What is better than warm cookies on a snow day! The only things I do differently from the recipe are make the cookies smaller and bake them for about nine minutes. Today's batch was made with mini chocolate chips and toffee chips.

( Click to see snow! )

Oh, and YUM:

I am a faithful reader of Missypedia. She posts great recipes with beautiful pictures. The other day she posted a recipe for The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies EVAR, and I just had to try them.

I usually use the Crisco sticks recipe when I make chocolate chip cookies, but lately I've been dissatisfied with the results. They seem to puff up and don't get very brown. The pictures on Missy's site were exactly what I've been wanting my cookies to look like.

I had planned on waiting until we got back from vacation to try them, but today I was just hanging out and doing laundry, plus I had all the ingredients, so I decided to give them a try.

Oh. My. God.

Missy wasn't kidding when she said best EVAR. This is my new recipe. Chris and the girls loved them, too. I'm not going to post the recipe since it's already in Missy's blog, but here are some pictures to drool over. I followed the recipe to the letter, except I melted the butter in the microwave and used vanilla paste instead of extract.

We'll start with the ingredients:



( And move on to the yummy parts... )

I do love to bake, and it always makes my family happy when I bake chocolate chip cookies. They're so easy to make, and so quick that it's almost instant gratification. After the dough is put together (really only about 5-10 minutes), then it's only about 12-15 minutes from oven to mouth.

I use the recipe on the Crisco sticks package; I haven't found another chocolate chip cookie recipe that we like as much. I don't deviate from the basic dough recipe except that I use vanilla paste instead of extract. It really does make a difference, I think. It's more expensive than extract, but definitely worth it.

I also use the basic dough recipe for adding ingredients other than chocolate chips, such as peanut butter chips, white chocolate chips, dried cranberries, dried blueberries, toffee chips, etc. You're only limited by your imagination!

( Recipe and pictures this way... )