Guest blogger Abby Holmes is an entertainment reporter at The World.

I’m sure you’ve heard of chocolate chip cookies before, but unless you’re a close personal friend of mine, you’ve never heard of cookles.

Cookles began as chocolate chip cookies, a recipe from my mom’s 30-year-old binder full of recipes she’s collected over the years. She used to make them rather frequently, and I enjoyed eating them — they were the best chocolate chip cookies I’d ever eaten. By the time I was in high school, I was spending slow, boring afternoons making batches to give out to my friends and family. They were kind of a big deal. I didn’t actually boast about how good they were until the onslaught of requests I got for more. That’s how they went from being just ordinary chocolate chip cookies to being “Cookles.”

One of my best friends, Jason Enyart, had a studio apartment in Wenatchee where I went almost every day. He is my biggest cookie fan, I think. Well, Jason and I kept a dictionary of words that were misspoken, mistyped, etc., during correspondence. While instant messaging with him late one night, I accidentally typed “cookles” instead of “cookies” when telling him that I had just made some, and he decided to add that to the dictionary — but only when referring to my chocolate chip cookies, so they would be distinguished from the rest (they’re so good, they deserve distinguishing, according to Jason’s logic). Another word from that dictionary, mook (that’s Jasonese for “milk,” I believe originating from the knowledge that milk comes from cows and cows go “moo”), made it into our regular speech. Whenever referring to Cookles, it’s just natural to include mook.

Besides, the name alone makes “mook and cookles” way more fun to eat than “milk and cookies.” One of the awesomest things about cookles is that you can alter the recipe to make them taste different each time, and find which way you like it best. Sometimes you might try melting the butter more before mixing, adding another tablespoon or two of vanilla extract, or changing other measurements (although I can tell you from experience that omitting the salt completely won’t lead to tasty results). Once I added 1/2 cup of walnuts for my friend Brandon who said he likes walnuts in his cookies, and they turned out great. Give it a try and see what you get and what works well for you. Oh, and let me know how it goes!

Cookles
1 cup (two sticks) butter
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
2 tbsp vanilla extract
2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 1/4 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees fahrenheit. Soften butter (about 20 seconds in the microwave). Cream butter and sugars in large mixing bowl. Mix in egg and vanilla. Add remaining dry ingredients and mix well. Add chocolate chips. Roll dough into 1-inch balls and arrange on a large non-greased baking sheet about 2 inches apart (should make 12 per batch). Bake for 8-10 minutes. Cool on a cooling rack. Yield: 36 cookles.

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