Chocolate Goodness!

Reading a friend's blog the other day, I came across a recipe she had tried for an absolutely irresistible looking brownie cookie that I had to make. She had come across it on another blog that she reads. The recipe was for Ghirardelli Brownie Cookies...

Ever since Josh and I visited the Ghirardelli Chocolate and Ice Cream Shop in San Francisco in 2007, we have been hooked on this chocolate. I am normally not a fan of hot fudge (I know, what's wrong with me?), but when you have a bit of freshly made hot fudge at their shop, it will turn even a hater like me into a fan! Whenever I make brownies now, I buy one of their packaged mixes to use. So, the thought of a tasty Ghirardellli cookie was delightful! We had friends over for dinner tonight, so I thought, what better time to try out this new recipe then for our guests?

Ethan and I gathered the ingredients and went to work.

Ingredients:

• 1 Ghirardelli brownie mix (I used double chocolate, so it already had chocolate chips in it)
• 2 eggs
• 1/3 cup oil
• 3 Tbsp flour
• 1 1/2 cups of peanut butter chips, or nuts, can be mixed in (optional)

Directions:

• Mix flour into brownie mix.

• Slightly beat eggs with oil and mix in.

• Mix-in any add-ins until combined. The dough should be stiff like cookie dough.

• Bake at 350 degrees for 10-11 minutes, depending on the size of the cookies. Use less time for cookies that are 2" or smaller. One recipe will make 24-30 cookies, depending on the size. 
• Let cookies rest on pan for 2 minutes, and then cool on baking racks.

I decided that I wanted to add in both peanut butter chips (because nothing goes better with chocolate than peanut butter, right?) and nuts (their nutritional benefits made me feel better about stuffing my face with chocolate), so I added 1/2 cup of sliced almonds (that was all I had left) and 1 cup of peanut butter chips, to equal 1 1/2 cups total add-ins. :) I was planning to use walnuts, but didn't realize I was out of them, so I used the almonds instead. I think that the walnuts may work better with this recipe, but the almonds were still good too. The only change I made to the recipe was that I baked them for 12 minutes. My batch yielded 24 cookies. They were SUPER tasty and definitely did not disappoint! I will surely make these again. :) Let me know what you think if you try them out too!