Hansen Sons: The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies Ever (With An Accidental Secret Ingredient)

It has been quite a while since we've had a babysitter come over during the day so that I could get some work done. Well, it's been over three weeks since I have been to bed before 3 AM (and most days lately it's been right around 4) so last week we had a sweet girl named Sarah came over two afternoons. We had met Sarah before, but got to really know her at Quinn and Lindsey's wedding where she was a junior bridesmaid. She attempted to help Lillie get over her pre-game jitters over walking down the isle although I have to say that was not much of a success, seeing how Lillie ended up being carried down the isle on another bridesmaid's hip! I don't think Lillie will be getting any more invitations to be a flower girl any time soon - haha! Anyway, as soon as Sarah arrived last week she and Lillie quickly bonded over their love of baking (or maybe more their love of "sneaking" licks from the bowl, which Lillie inherited from me, of course).

I don't know about you all, but we really use Pinterest! We have tried quite a few of the recipes we've discovered on there. In fact, I hope to do a post at some point with links to my favorite ones. Anyway, although I love trying new things, Lillie's favorite is just regular ol' chocolate chip cookies. Last week she and Sarah experimented with some brownies with oreos in them, but this week they decided to just make some basic cookies. Well, I got the stuff out for Sarah and then told her that we generally just use the ingredients on the back of the Toll House package and add a little more brown sugar, and vanilla and then at the end we add in some oatmeal and a big scoop of peanut butter. My computer is set up on our kitchen island so I got to work editing some photos while they started baking. When it came time for the peanut butter we realized that both of our jars were empty - ahhh! I was looking through the cupboards hunting for a full jar that I could have sworn we had (although it still hasn't turned up so maybe I am going crazy) and came across a jar of nutella. Well, we figured it couldn't hurt to try that, right? So we scooped a big hunk in and gave it a try. OH MY GOODNESS! It was divine! In fact I think we ate more than half the batter before we even got to making the cookies. And I am embarrassed to say that we ate all but one cookie before dinner time! Ugh! (In our defense we made a half batch and Jon contributed to some of the nibbling before dinner too).

Now, I know that everyone has a different opinion on food, so some people may not think it's that great, or some may not think it tastes all that different from a regular cookie but I have to say everyone in our house has officially claimed it our FAVORITE cookie! By Far! They were so good that we made them again the next day and I took photos and noted exactly how much we used of everything so we could write the recipe up. I will say they were a little fluffier the first day versus the day that we took pictures, but I think that may have had to do with the heat.

My little piglet Lillie eating one...

So here's the recipe. We always start with the basic Toll House recipe but add a little more brown sugar and vanilla. And then the ingredients we added that are not on the package are oatmeal, nutella, chocolate chunks, and milk chocolate shavings (that's optional). Seeing how there is nothing new under the sun, I am sure someone out there has tried nutella in a chocolate chip cookie before, but seeing how it is new to us and I haven't seen it on Pinterest or anywhere else yet, thought we would share it all with you!

If you click on the picture is should open larger and you can save it to your desktop and print it out!
(And if you don't have or like nutella just substitute it with peanut butter - that's how we normally make them and they are delicious!)