It’s time we eat something completely, totally, unabashedly FUN.
Because what’s summer without some crazy cookies?!
Eating seasonal is obviously one of the best parts of summer, but after days of luscious tomatoes, deep purple eggplant, and endless mounds of berries, sometimes you just want to eat some JUNK. Empty carbs, excess sugar, a trail of butter that leads straight to your thighs? Exactly. It’s good to indulge your garbage tastes every now and then, and for those times I like to channel my junkiest of junk food inclinations into one particular vice — Cookies.
What exactly defines a great cookie can mean any number of things — crispy and crunchy, soft and chewy, drowning in chocolate, shimmered in sugar? — it all depends. But for me, a great cookie is buttery, chocolatey, and soft, with extra crispy edges, a super-doughy inside, and a junktastic surprise woven in between.
If that surprise happens to be multicolored, all the better.
I first whipped up a batch of these fruity pebble cookies last summer, at the time using all brown sugar, a touch less butter, and two annoying bowls. The results were good, sure, but I knew they could be better. So after some gentle tweaking I deduced the following:
All white sugar lent a chewier, lighter finish than brown sugar, and this in turn created greater balance against the crispy fruity pebbles.
To add more density/moistness in lieu of brown sugar, I added extra butter.
MORE FRUITY PEBBLES. I basically doubled down on my original dosage, and that was a very wise decision.
One. single. bowl. Because who has the time, amirite?
If you’ve ever wondered whether each fruity pebble color has its own distinct flavor, I can boldly confirm that they do. I never really noticed this as a kid — I was more of a shove-it-in-your-face type — but as a sophisticated adult who bakes cereal into desserts, I can definitively say that the blue flakes taste like blueberry, the red flakes like cherry, and on and on. Does this artificial fruitness make these any healthier? Of course not. But it does lend a certain crack-like affect, so don’t look at me when you inhale 12 in one sitting.
As you can see the pebbles add a crisply colorful element that immediately instigates drools, so be sure that these will go quickly. To make things even more adorable I used HUGE chunks of freshly chopped milk chocolate (do this) AND stacked them high to the sky like a leaning tower of cookie Pisa, so if you’ve ever dreamt of being six again, make these.
Also — eat the damn dough. It’s good to live dangerously.
One Bowl Fruity Pebbles Chocolate Chunk Cookies
Ingredients:
- ¾ cup Salted Butter
- 1 large Egg
- 1 cup Sugar
- 1 ½ tsps. Vanilla
- 2 cups All Purpose Flour
- 2 tsps Baking Soda
- pinch of Salt
- 1 ½ cups Chocolate Chips or Chunks (if using chocolate bars, you’ll need 7 oz!)
- ½ cup Fruity Pebbles (or more!)
- Crisco to grease
Directions:
- In large mixing bowl melt the butter in your microwave, ~20 seconds. Allow to cool to room temperature, then whisk in the egg, sugar, and vanilla until smooth. Next, cover the bowl with a fine mesh sieve, then sift in the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir all ingredients to bring the dough together, adding in the chocolate chunks and fruity pebbles as you do. Once well combined, chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
- Pre-heat oven to 350F. Amply grease two baking sheets with Crisco.
- Form dough into golf ball sized rounds and transfer to greased baking sheets, flattening the tops as you do. When ready, bake for ~10 minutes on oven middle rack until cookies are just beginning to brown around the edges. Allow to cool for several minutes on baking sheet, then transfer to wire rack to completely cool. EAT!
pebbles! so fruity.
