Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies

Purim. Hamantaschen. The triangle cookies filled with poppy seed and apricot, Sylvia's dough, my hands. I made six dozen and distributed them across my various communities: the grandchildren, the support group, the Cedarhurst staff, the neighbors, the synagogue. The distributing of hamantaschen is its own form of Purim — the holiday's theme is the sending of gifts, the sharing of food, the insistence that joy must be communal to be real. I share. The sharing is the joy. The joy is the hamantaschen. The hamantaschen are the chain.

I brought hamantaschen to Marvin. He ate two — a poppy seed and an apricot. He ate them slowly, with concentration, and when I said, "It's Purim, Marv," he said nothing, but his chewing was deliberate and his face was peaceful and the peace was the holiday, the peace was the cookie doing what the cookie does: connecting the man in the recliner to the woman in the kitchen to the mother who taught the woman to the grandmother who taught the mother, across time and disease and the unbridgeable distance between remembering and forgetting.

I wrote a blog post about hamantaschen — about the folding of the dough into triangles, about the filling that must not leak, about the patience required to fold each cookie properly and the impatience of a woman who has been folding cookies for fifty years and who still, occasionally, has one that opens in the oven and spills its filling onto the baking sheet like a confession. The leaking cookie is the honest cookie. The leaking cookie is the one that could not hold its insides in. I feel solidarity with the leaking cookie. I have been holding my insides in for five years. Sometimes a cookie leaks.

Hamantaschen are, at their core, a cookie you make for other people — and so are these. After Purim, after delivering the last triangle to the last neighbor and coming home to a kitchen that smelled of poppy seed and apricot and fifty years of my mother’s hands, I wanted to bake something just slightly more forgiving than a cookie that has to hold its shape and seal its edges and never, ever leak. Chocolate chip pudding cookies are the answer to that. They stay soft for days, they travel well, they welcome the grandchildren and the support group and the Cedarhurst staff with equal generosity — and if one spreads a little too wide on the pan, nobody calls it a failure. They call it the best one.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 12 minutes | Total Time: 30 minutes | Servings: 48 cookies

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to room temperature
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 package (3.4 oz) instant vanilla pudding mix, dry (do not prepare)
2 large eggs
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

Instructions

Preheat and prepare. Preheat your oven to 375°F (190°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
Whisk dry ingredients. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Set aside.
Cream butter and sugars. In a large bowl using a hand mixer or stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, beat the softened butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed.
Add pudding mix. With the mixer on low, add the dry instant pudding mix directly to the butter mixture. Beat until fully incorporated, about 1 minute. The mixture will look thick and slightly grainy — this is correct.
Add eggs and vanilla. Add the eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the vanilla extract and mix until combined.
Incorporate dry ingredients. With the mixer on low, gradually add the flour mixture to the wet ingredients, mixing just until no dry streaks remain. Do not overmix.
Fold in chocolate chips. Using a rubber spatula or wooden spoon, fold in the chocolate chips until evenly distributed throughout the dough.
Portion and bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough onto the prepared baking sheets, spacing them about 2 inches apart. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes, until the edges are just set and the centers look slightly underdone. They will continue to firm as they cool.
Cool completely. Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container at room temperature for up to one week — they stay soft throughout.

Nutrition (per serving)

Chocolate Chip Pudding Cookies — The Cookie That Holds (and the One That Doesn’t)