Not only is this the best chocolate chip cookie recipe I’ve ever tried, they’re photogenic too! I love chunky cookies. I’ve baked these several times in the last little while and they’ve been such a hit. The secret’s in the pudding! They’re too good not to share, so here’s the recipe

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 cup butter (softened)
• 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1 (3.5 oz) package instant Cheesecake pudding mix
• 2 eggs
• 2 1/4 cups flour (bread flour helps make them chunky)
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup coconut flakes
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts
• 1 cup chocolate chips
  (white, semi-sweet, and/or milk chocolate chips – just pour in what looks good)

DIRECTIONS:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (177 degrees C.)
2. In a mixing bowl, cream butter and sugars. Add pudding mix, eggs and vanilla. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt. Add to creamed mixture and mix well. Dough will be very thick. Fold in nuts, coconut, and chocolate chips.
3. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased baking sheets and bake 10-12 minutes or until lightly browned. They don’t spread out much, so if you want a bigger cookie than this, you’ll need to adjust the temperature and cooking time.

Note - The above is how I make them. You can use different flavors of pudding, leave out or adjust the amounts of the coconut or nuts if you want, and add as many or few chocolate chips as you want. They’ll still be delicious!

I actually found this one myself It’s kind of fun to see it and think, hey! That’s one of mine! It’s being used as a cover for an e-book the company is selling.

And here is the original at iStockphoto.com:

This little doll is 7 months old now, and we got to do another commercial session together. Is it possible to have too much fun at a photo shoot? I love my job Click the play button on the lower left side to see some of my favorites set to music.

There were 38 girls in the pageant this year which is a record for this area. It took place over two entertaining nights with a full house both nights at the King Fine Arts Center in Burley. The girls were from all over our region representing several different high schools. The winners receive various amounts of scholarship money, with the overall winning Junior Miss also receiving all expenses paid to the State Junior Miss pageant, a 6 month membership at Impact Athletics, and a portrait session by yours truly

The following photo was taken after their opening dance the second night.

And here is a photo of this year’s Mini-Cassia Junior Miss winner Brooklyn Gunnell (left) getting a hug from 1st runner up Brittni Duncan. Congratulations, Brooklyn! I’m looking forward to your portrait session

This cute girl came up from Utah and we had such a nice time doing her senior portraits. She brought her adorable dog, too She was thinking about not having any portraits taken in her formal gown, but since she did bring it I asked to see it and told her we just HAD to get some of her wearing it. Gorgeous gown. Click the play button in the lower left corner to view as a slideshow – I added music this time

We got some baby chicks recently and I just had to take some stock photos of them. They’re too cute! We also have an old Bible that was printed in 1890 that’s so cool. And yeah, some candy for props of course Jim was the chicken wrangler and the chicks were so funny we were in hysterics, I wish we had a video of that shoot. Click the play button in the lower left corner to see some fun pics.

These two have a happiness about them that is contagious! We all had such a good time, and they were both so cooperative and easy to work with. I’m really looking forward to their wedding at the end of July!

And with this post, welcome to my new way for displaying photos here on my blog – use the middle arrow to view, or just click the play button in the lower left corner to view in slideshow mode. I hope you like my new trick