Josie's Chocolate Chip Cookies

When I was a little girl my mom used to take my sister and I to visit an elderly woman in our church named Josie Willoughmy. She was very tall and thin, with long, snow white hair that I only ever saw in a bun. I think she was probably in her 80's and to my little eyes, seemed incredibly old! She lived in Upland, CA and had lived there all her life. She had photo albums of that area when it was only farms and wagons and orange groves. She had a fabulous garden that she tended herself with vegetables and berries and a whole greenhouse for different kinds of orchids. She is the one who taught me to crochet. And she made the most wonderful chocolate chip cookies we had ever had! We would go to her house, visit for a while with her and her little dog, Frisky, and then at the end she would pull out the cookies and some Hawaiian punch and serve them to us on china she had hand-painted herself. As an adult, I wish now that I could go back to those visits and listen a little more closely to all the stories of the rich life she had lead. But as a child, I mostly looked forward to those cookies!

They are made with instant vanilla Jell-O pudding and Josie told us she got this recipe off their box somewhere back in the 1930's or 1940's. After years of visiting her, she finally shared the recipe with us and it has become firmly fixed as a Dieter tradition. I can hardly believe I've been blogging for over a year and haven't put these on here yet. So without further delay, here you go:



Josie's Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup butter-flavored Crisco
1/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 eggs
1 small box Jell-O instant vanilla pudding
Chocolate chips
Nuts, optional

- Preheat oven to 350 degrees
- Mix dry ingredients and set aside
- Mix butter, Crisco, sugars, vanilla, eggs, and powdered pudding mix until creamy.
- Gradually add in dry ingredients and then chocolate chips (and nuts if desired)
- Bake 8-10 minutes. And here is the key for these cookies: Do NOT overbake them. Start peaking at them around 8 minutes. You want to remove them when the top feels slightly firm to the touch but before they are turning brown. This will cause them to stay wonderfully soft and chewy even after they have cooled.

I shared this recipe with Jeff a couple of months ago and he has started making them for his kids and for friends. He is a new but very enthusiastic cook and this weekend we learned a valuable lesson about communication! The first time I sent him this recipe, I only wrote "1 pkg instant vanilla pudding" and he quite naturally bought the little cups of pre-made pudding and added those to the cookies. When I saw those little cups in his pantry, I corrected him and told him to get the powdered pudding. He did this and then proceeded to make the pudding and then add it to the dough. We got a good laugh out of that this weekend and made the batch above correctly with just the contents of the box of instant pudding.

One more thing, I've never played around with it, but I think it would be fun to try adding a chocolate pudding mix or even a butterscotch pudding mix instead of just vanilla to these to see what other kinds of cookie variations you could get out of it.

Happy Monday!