Yin Yang Cookies

Use your favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe and add 1 cup of coarsely crushed pretzels to the dough when you are folding in the chocolate chips. I used the original size pretzels; I don’t think rods or sticks would work as well.

Now here is the important part: use a standard size ice cream scoop to create the balls of dough, and then bake the cookies at 285 degrees for 13-18 minutes or until the edges are barely browning. Then remove them from the oven and press the cookies flat with the back of a spatula. Leave the cookies on the hot cookie sheet until completely cooled.

Now you may be wondering why I use this weird method. Well, for some reason the crushed pretzels add so much bulk to the dough that they don’t really spread out while they are baking, and they turn into big baseball-like cookies that are raw-ish in the middle. But if you follow the directions above, you will end up with a cookie that holds its shape and is crisp on the outside yet soft and chewy on the inside.

And that yin-yang … oh yeah, baby!