Instant pudding mix in cookies? Now THAT sound very interesting!
Thanks for adding the ounces of the pudding boxes
(what do you bet they shrink those too - and we won’t know until it’s too late - aargh)
I think it is the pudding mix that keeps the cookies soft! All I can say is that we tried the recipe once and we were sold. Everyone asks us for the recipe now, whenever they taste them. Most of the time we leave the nuts out, since not everyone in the family likes nuts, and they are delicious either way.
For variation we have substituted chocolate pudding for the vanila pudding and have added chocolate mint chips, chocolate chips, or chocolate raspberry chips. All three of these versions were also delicious. I think they would be good at Christmas time using the chocolate pudding, chocolate chips and sprinkling some crushed candy canes on top as well, but we haven’t tried that yet.
Another thing we did try was using butterscotch pudding and adding butterscotch or caramel chips and adding some chopped pecans to the cookies. These too turned out great, but the adults liked them better than the kids, since the little ones like the chocolate chips.
I am sure white chocolate chips would be good in any of these versions of the cookies too. In fact I have been thinking about trying white chocolate chips with some chopped macademia nuts. We have even tried half chocolate chips and half caramel chips together and they were also great.
This is an easy cookie recipe to play around with different flavor chips and puddings. My daughters have loved being creative with it, but their favorite is still the original version.
Here is another cookie recipe that was given to me that is one of my favorites. They are quick and easy to make and so good, so they are great cookies to make when you need to make up a batch of cookies quickly. I love to make these during the Holiday Season as quick bread mixes go on sale quite frequently between Halloween and the New Year.
Cranberry Pecan Sandies
Cookies:
1 package of Cranberry Orange quickbread mix (15.6 oz.)
½ cup of melted butter
2 tablespoons of orange juice
¾ cup of pecans
about 3 dozen pecan halves
Glaze:
1 cup of confectioner’s sugar
3-4 teaspoons of orange juice
Combine the first four ingredients and mix together, then fold in the ¾ cup of pecans. Roll dough into 1 inch balls and place about 1 inch apart on an ungreased cookie sheet. Flatten each cookie with a glass coated in cooking spray, and then press a pecan half onto the top of each cookie. Bake the cookies in a 350-degree oven (325 for dark colored cookie sheets) for 12-14 minutes or until lightly browned. Cool cookies for about a minute on the sheet, and then transfer to a wire rack with a cookie sheet underneath the wire rack to cool.
Mix up glaze and drizzle over cookies. The excess glaze will drip on to the cookie sheet underneath the wire rack instead of pooling on your counter.
This makes about 3 dozen small cookies.